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THE PHARISEES 


BY 


R. TRAVERS HERFORD, B.A. 


AUTHOR OF “ CHRISTIANITY IN TALMUD AND MIDRASH’”’ 


“¢ PHARISAISM, ITS AIM AND ITS METHOD,” EDITOR 


OF “ PIRKE ABOTH, ETC., ETC. 


Frew Dork — 
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1924 


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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


CopyriGHT, 1924, 


By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


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~ Printed and published, April, 1924 





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Printing Headquarters 
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PREFACE 


THE Introduction in Chapter I contains most of what 
would naturally be included in a preface. 

The present book is in no sense merely a second edition 
of my early book, Pharisaism, its Aim and tts Method, 
1912, but a wholly new study on the same subject. 
Circumstances have led me to write it and publish it 
sooner than I might otherwise have done; but, as the 
reasons are purely personal, I need not go into them. 
How far the book is an advance and an improvement 
on the former one, I leave to the reader to judge. 

Of the many writers whose work has helped me in 
my studies of Pharisaism, I would mention two to whom 
I am especially indebted—Professor J. Z. Lauterbach, of 
Cincinnati, and Dr. Leo Baeck, of Berlin. Of the former 
I have written in the introductory chapter, and will 
here say only that without the help of his theory I could 
not have written the present book at all. 

My debt to Dr. Baeck is no less great though not so 
clearly defined. I have read and re-read several times 
his profound work, Das Wesen des Judentums, in the 
enlarged second edition, 1922. If I have not directly 
quoted passages from it, I have learned very much from 
it, and its influence is to be felt in.many pages of my 
book. To both these writers I tender my deepest 
gratitude. 





CONTENTS 


PREFACE . ; ; ‘ ; Habe g Pe acs eet Ee Dace 7 
CHAPTER 
I. INTRODUCTION . : ae ee ‘ of lee Ne rete 8 | 
II. HistToricAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM . . .. 18 
DMC OOMAMOUANO TRADITION . 3 .. . «© ss + + 83 
IV. THE PHARISEES AND THE SYNAGOGUE . : are a = 
V. THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES—I . yee teke TOs 
A. The Halachah as a Moral Discipline SMe Cer, 
B. Merit and Reward . : : ; See nae | 
C. The Relation of Pharisaism to the racic of the 
Fropnets . . ees : ; ; . 135 
. eoranandthe Morallaw. . . . . ..-338 
VI. THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES—II. Be rata © he, 
VII. PHARISAISM AND THE APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE. . 176 
VIII. PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT . ‘ : $27708 
MPUMIGOMCLUSION s,s 8 ee ww Cw RBG 
INDICES :—_ 
(I) GENERAL . ie a Sea tein, Leys lanes Gees ee 
(II) RaBBINICAL PassaGEs CITED . . . kien ce Fs, 
(III) Orv TestaMENT PassaGEs CITED .  .  « «247 


(IV) New TESTAMENT PassaGES CITED .  . » . 248 


THE PHARISEES 


CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 


It is only natural that such interest as is taken by the 
ordinary reader in the subject of the Pharisees and 
Pharisaism should be limited to their appearance in the 
period of history which includes the rise of Christianity. 
If they did not form part of the background of the 
Gospels, few would be at any pains to learn about them. 
It is not generally supposed that they had, or have, any 
importance on their own account, that their history 
began long before Christianity appeared and, in prin- | 
ciple though not in name, is going on still. The Pharisees 
are commonly regarded as the opponents of Jesus, the 


men who had reduced Judaism to such a condition that 


Christianity was the reaction by which the free prophetic 
spirit was liberated from the bondage of the Law. His- 
torical justice is thought to be satisfied by remembering 
against them the stinging gibe—‘‘ Scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites.” Yet, however natural this view may be, 
it is obviously inadequate and superficial. It takes no 
account of the reasons why the Pharisees were what 
they were, nor of the process by which they became 
such, nor of the fact that being what they were they 
have continued to order their lives by the same principles 
of religion and morality down to the present day. Nor 
does it take account of the consideration that if the 
Pharisees had been in their real nature and characters 
such as they are usually sae th and Pharisaism the 
1 


12 THE PHARISEES 


organised hypocrisy commonly supposed, such continued 
existence and unfailing vitality would have been impossible. 

Such limitation of view vitiates most of what has been 
written about the Pharisees by Christian scholars. Its 
effect is not merely to confine the study of Pharisaism 
to the period covered by Josephus, the New Testament 
and the Apocalyptic literature, but to lead to an estimate 
of its importance mainly dependent on its relation to 
Christianity. Thereis, indeed, amarked difference between 
the older writers, such as Lightfoot and Scheettgen, and 
modern scholars like Schiirer? and Bousset, in their 
desire to be fair to the men of whom they were writing. 
The older writers frankly assumed that the Pharisees 
really were hypocrites, chargeable with all the enormities 
natural to enemies of Jesus. Lightfoot and Schcettgen 
knew their Talmud and Midrash far more thoroughly 
than Schiirer and Bousset know it, and they were able 
to throw a great deal of light upon the thought and 
language of the New Testament. But they seldom lost 
an opportunity of contrasting the Law with the Gospel, 
to the dire discredit of the former. The modern writers, 
of. whom those named are among the most distinguished, 
do honestly try to be just to the Pharisees; and if they 
had such a mastery of the Rabbinical literature as their 
predecessors had acquired, they might have produced a 
far more adequate result than they have done. At least 
the older writers knew where to go for information 
about the Pharisees, though it had not dawned on 
them to inquire into the deeper meaning of what they. 
found. 

It is true that the modern writers have mostly been 
concerned with Pharisaism as one element in a larger 
and more complex whole, and might justly excuse them- 
selves from a thorough investigation into the history 
and theory of Pharisaism. In a book dealing with the 
general subject of the Judaism of the New Testament 

* For a devastating exposure of Schiirer’s acquaintance with the 


Rabbinical literature, see Chwolson, Das letzte Passamahl Christ, 
1908, Beilage I, pp. 134-43. 


INTRODUCTION . 13 


period, an exhaustive treatment of the Pharisees would 
be out of proportion with the rest. Nevertheless, the 
preliminary work for such a general history ought to 
have included an independent study of Pharisaism for 
itself and by itself, in order that the summary to be 
given in the larger work might contain only well- 
ascertained truth, and facts on which sound conclusions 
could be based. Weber did make such a thorough study 
of Pharisaism, founded on a very wide reading in 
the Rabbinical literature. But his book, System der 
Altsynagogalen Palestinischen Theologie, shows not the 
slightest comprehension of the real nature and intention 
of Pharisaism; and the abundant material he has col- 
lected, valuable as it is to those who know how to use 
it, is presented in such a way as to make his picture 
hardly more than a caricature. Weber is the guide of 
most Christian writers who have no first-hand knowledge 
of the Rabbinical literature; and the result is what 
follows when the blind lead the blind. Weber’s stand- 
point is that of a Christian whose theology is arranged 
on the lines of a creed, and he arranges his “‘ system ”’ 
of Jewish theology on corresponding lines, regardless, or 
ignorant, of the fact that Jewish theology was not a 
system and never had a creed. Even if it had, it is a 
pure assumption that it would have followed lines at all 
corresponding to those of any Christian creed. 

Neither Weber nor Schiirer nor Bousset, nor Ewald 
nor Hilgenfeld, nor Wellhausen,? nor any others of the 
many non-Jewish scholars who have written about the 
Pharisees, have, as it seems to me, been able to escape 
the limitation of view referred to above. All seem to 
have the contrast with Christianity more or less con- 
sciously present in their minds, not realising that two 


t Wellhausen, a great authority in other fields, puts himself 
out of court by the singular remark (Phar. und Sadd., p. 123) that in 
regard to Pharisaism it ‘‘ hier eben mdglich sei das Einzelne ohne 
das Ganze zu verstehen.” See on this, F. Perles, Bousset’s Religion 
des Judentums .. . Kritisch untersucht, 1903, p. 8. Also Chwolson, 
Das letzte Passamahl Christi, 1908, p. 68. 


14 THE PHARISEES 


things cannot be rightly compared until it has first been 
ascertained what each of them is in itself, apart from 
such comparison. The Pharisees may be intrinsically 
inferior to the type of character appropriate to the New 
Testament; but to call the New Testament as the chief 
witness upon the question who the Pharisees really were, 
is false in logic and unsound in history. 

It is not too much to say that little or nothing has 
been contributed by the Christian scholars named to the 
real understanding of Pharisaism. For the most part 
they have taken the material furnished by (a) the New — 
Testament, which is strongly anti-Pharisaic, (6) Josephus, 
who wrote in the first instance for Roman readers ignorant 
of Judaism, and therefore unable to control his state- 
ments, and (c) the Apocalyptic literature, much of which 
is not Pharisaic at all. By the help of these materials 
they have drawn what can only be called a superficial 
sketch, honestly intended to represent Pharisaism, but 
seen at once to be wrong by those who know Pharisaism 
from the inside.t This result is due in part, and perhaps 
a large part, to the fact that the material referred 
to’ is easily accessible to every scholar who can read 
Greek, while the real and only true source of infor- 
mation as to the Pharisees, the Rabbinical literature, is 
not easily accessible even to those who can read their 
Hebrew Bible, and is a sealed book—in spite of Weber— 
to those who read only Greek or their mother-tongue. 

The only real contributions made hitherto to the know- 
ledge of the principles of Pharisaism have been made by — 
Jewish scholars, for they alone have been able to make 
full use of the Rabbinical literature. For the further 
reason also, that they, by their ancestry and training, 
know what Pharisaism is like from the inside, even 


t A remarkable illustration of this is seen in an article by Eerd- 
mans, ‘‘ Farizeen en Sadduceen.”’ Theol. Tijdschrift, 1914 (Sonderab- 
druck, pp. 8-9). He there, by means of a re-translation of M. Jad. 
iv. 6, arrives at the astonishing conclusion that Johanan b. Zaccai 
sided with the Sadducees! The translation of Jad. iv. 6 which 
he “corrects ’’ is not quite literal, but it gives the true meaning. 


INTRODUCTION 15 


though they may not have adhered in every respect to 
the traditional practices and ways of thought of the 
Pharisees. Jost, Gratz and especially Geiger have been 
pioneers in explaining Pharisaism. If Christian scholars 
have by this time recognised that the Pharisees were 
not a political party but represented the strongest re- 
_ ligious element in Judaism, it is mainly due to Geiger.? 

His chapter on the Sadducees and Pharisees was in its 
time by far the best that had been written on the subject, 
and contains much that is valuable even now. But he 
did not get to the heart of the matter by discovering the 
real ground of difference between the Pharisees and their 
opponents. He discussed the various points of difference 
alleged by Josephus, but did not perceive, any more 
than Josephus had done, that one of those points was 
far more important than all the rest. 

The merit of that discovery is due to Lauterbach, 
who made it known in the brilliant essay? which he 
contributed to the Kohler Festschrift, 1913, pp. 177-98, 
Lauterbach finds the point of division bctween the 
Pharisees and the Sadducees in their respective attitude 
to the Oral Tradition in its application to the Torah. 
Josephus mentioned this but laid no stress on it, and 
combined it with other points of difference whose impor- 
tance is that of description rather than definition. The 
_ difference in regard to Oral Tradition is fundamental 

and far-reaching. 

It gives the clue to the eal explanation of who the 
Pharisees were, what they did and why they did it. 
_ Pharisaism becomes no longer an isolated phenomenon 
in Judaism, emerging from an obscure past into a dis- 
agreeable present and passing into a merited oblivion ; 
on the contrary it 1s seen to be a natural and even neces- 
sary development from the principle laid down by Ezra, 


t Geiger’s theory is set forth in his Urschrift und Uebersetzumgen 
dey Bibel, pp. 101-58. 

2 The essay is there stated to be part of a larger work which the 
author then had in preparation. I have not seen the larger work, 
if it has already been published. 


16 THE PHARISEES 


and the Pharisees take their place in a consistent his- 
torical progression, having a strongly marked character 
of their own and a very definite purpose. Lauterbach 
naturally did not, in one short essay, cover the whole 
ground so as to show how fruitful his theory was in its 
application to Pharisaism in general. But beyond any 
doubt he has spoken the master-word on the subject, 
and all future treatment of Pharisaism must take account. 
of it. 

In the following pages I have fully accepted and made 
use of Lauterbach’s theory, and I would here express 
my deep obligation to him and my grateful acknowledg- 
ment of the help that I have derived from his writings. 
When I wrote my former book, Pharisaism, its Aim and 
its Method, Lauterbach’s essay was not published. The 
fact that I have since read and studied it will account 
for the main difference between the former book and the 
present one. It has enabled me, I trust, to understand 
Pharisaism more thoroughly than I did before; and 
while the main position taken up in the former book is 
not modified, it is now presented in fuller detail. Many 
points which were obscure to me have become clear, and 
in particular the whole meaning of Pharisaism as a factor 
in the religious development of the human race has dis- 
closed itself to a degree of which I had no conception 
when I wrote the former book. I do not now, any more 
then formerly, offer an Apologia for the Pharisees, not 
seeing, indeed, why any Apologia is needed. I have simply 
tried to present what I believe to be the real truth about 
them, as the result of a somewhat intimate acquaintance 
with their literature. If what I offer is the truth, I am 
not responsible for the conclusions which may follow 
from it. If it is not the truth, I must be content to have 
done my best, and to leave the work to abler hands 
than mine. 

The arrangement of the present book differs from that 
of the former one. I have been able to include many 
topics merely touched on or omitted in the former book, 
and have been able to reduce into smaller compass some 


INTRODUCTION 17 


features which were perhaps unduly prominent before. 
Twelve years of further study have, I trust, not been 
without effect in enabling me to offer something more 
adequate than my former attempt to solve the problems 
of Pharisaism. 


CHAPTER II 
HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 


THE starting-point of any history of Pharisaism must of 
necessity be the work of Ezra. He marks, in the long 
history of the Jewish people, the opening of a new 
period, a new stage of development, as important as the 
rise of prophecy, and only less important than the work 
of Moses. If Moses were the real founder of the Jewish 
religion, giving to it the power to rise above and draw 
away from the religions of ‘‘ the peoples round about,” 
Ezra stood forth at a most critical period to save the 
Jewish religion, and with it the national life, from 
_ relapsing into decay through contact with Gentile ideas 
and practices. 

How great he deemed the danger to be may be judged 
from the severity of the measures which he took to 
counteract it. He found the small, weak community in 
and around Jerusalem like sheep in the midst of wolves, 
surrounded by jealous and unfriendly neighbours and, 
what was even more dangerous, exposed to temptations 
towards apostasy from their religion through want of 
any strong conviction, any definite principle in whose 
defence they might be rallied. The Temple was, of 
course, the central institution of the national religious 
life, and it is possible that even thus early there were 
already synagogues to maintain that religious life by 
simpler and more individual appeal. But there was no 
distinct sense of an object to live for, no opening of a 
prospect towards a higher ideal. The national vitality 
was apparently ebbing away, and what Ezra did was 

18 


i a i a 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 19 


essentially to stop that fatal process and provide for the 
spiritual energy of his people, an object worthy to live 
for and, if need were, to die for. This is what he 
certainly did, whether or not he were himself fully aware 
of the significance of his work. 

There is enough, even in the scanty information con- 
tained in the book which bears his name, to show that 
Ezra had two main ideas, both of which he succeeded 
to a great extent in carrying out in practice. One was 
to set up a barrier between Jew and Gentile, for the 
protection of the Jew in living the life that he ought to 
live in obedience to the will of God; and the other was 
to proclaim in the Torah! the revelation of the divine 
will given to Israel, and the consequent duty of every 
faithful Jew to conform to it. The two ideas are closely 
related. The Jew had a religious life to live, else he 
would not be a Jew. The Torah was to be his guide in 
living that life; but he could not follow its guidance 
unless he were shielded to some extent from contact 
with the Gentile world, with its many temptations to 
apostasy. There, in fewest words, is the explanation of 
the work of Ezra; and, as I am not writing the history 
of Ezra and his times, I do not stay to enlarge on his 
activity. I have secured what is needed as the starting- 
point for the process which in course of time produced 
Pharisaism. 

The period which followed the time of Ezra is wrapped 
in obscurity, and only a few dim rays of light penetrate 
here and there. Somewhere in that obscurity Phari- 
saism had its beginning and its early history, and all 
that can be done is to take the help of those few rays 
of light and try to make out what they disclose. 

Of the two main ideas of Ezra just mentioned, the 
first was static, the second dynamic. The separation of 
the Jewish community from the Gentile world was the 
establishment of a state of things which might be main- 

1 For the full meaning and implications of the word Torah, 


which is intentionally left untranslated throughout this book, see 
Chapter III, ‘‘ Torah and Tradition.” 


20 THE PHARISEES 


tained or might be abandoned, but which, while it lasted, 
remained as it was. It was the condition, or so Ezra 
thought, on which the vitality of the Jewish people 
depended ; but, in and by itself, it did not create or even 
increase that vitality. But the proclamation of the 
Torah as the guide of life for the Jew was a very different 
matter. A guide is useless unless its guidance is under- 
stood, unless those who would obey its directions are 


clearly aware of what those directions are, and unless 


they have some means of finding an answer if they are 
in doubt. From the time of Ezra, accordingly, there 
was need of those who should interpret the Torah, and 
provision was made to meet that need. Ezra himself 
was Styled the Sopher, the Scribe, and the period after 
him is known as the period of the Sopherim. What 
exactly the name Sopherim was intended to convey is 
not quite certain. Sopher meant more than a mere 
writer, even a writer of the sacred books. And it is 
hard to suppose that it was given merely to those who 
counted the letters in those books. No doubt the Sopherim 
were concerned with writing copies of the Scriptures ; 
‘and in their desire for accuracy they very likely did, on 
occasion, count the letters. But they were, first and 


foremost, ‘‘ Men of the Book,”’ and that Book was the 


Sepher Torah, which it was their duty to expound and 
teach. It is probably in this sense that the epithet 
Sopher was understood of Ezra. Now it is said of him 
(Ezra vii. 10) that ‘he had set his heart to ‘seek’ the 
law of the Lord and to do it and to teach in Israel 
statutes and judgments.’’! The word ‘seek’ does not 
represent what Ezra had set his heart to do. ‘ Darash’ 
in this connection, when its object is the Torah, is not 
to ‘seek’ but to ‘interpret,’ and the result of so doing 
was ‘Midrash.’ The Chronicler, who is responsible for what 
is called in the Old Testament the Book of Ezra, lived 
in a time when the meaning of ‘ Midrash’ was quite well 
known, and he used the word himself (2 Chron. xxiv. 27). 


™ Seema tiodsy mwydd nin? min nse oe 235 pon sty %D 
SDE) pn 


eo a 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 21 


Ezra was the first of those who made it their 
business to ‘interpret’ the Torah; and he did so for the 
purpose of “‘ teaching in Israel statutes and judgments.” 
What he began the Sopherim continued, and presumably 
that is why they were called Sopherim. 

It had been, from time immemorial, the function of 
the priests to give religious teaching to the people as 
occasion required. And doubtless many, perhaps most, 
of the early Sopherim were priests. Yet it is worthy of 
note that those who “ caused the people to understand ”’ 
the Torah, when Ezra read it (Neh. viii. 7), included 
Levites, even if those named were not themselves Levites. 
It should be noted, however, that although the term 
Sopherim, in its Greek equivalent ypaypare?s, appears 
often in the New Testament, it has there a professional 
meaning somewhat different from its original one. Or, 
more exactly, while the name continued in use for certain 
purposes, the period of the Sopherim originally so-called 
was admitted to have come to an end long before the 
New Testament times. This clearly appears, if it be 
allowed that the Sopherim are identical with the persons 
called the “Men of the Great Synagogue.’’ For it is 
stated in the Mishnah (Aboth i. 2) that Simeon the Just 
was “‘of the remnants of the Great Synagogue,”’ i.e. he 
was one of the last who had belonged to that body. This 
Simeon, according to the more probable identification, 
died about 270 B.c. (see my Pirké Aboth, ad loc.). The 
Great Synagogue, or the Sopherim, therefore, died out in 
or about 270 B.c. | 

The term “the Great Synagogue ”’ does not necessarily 
imply a definitely organised assembly, such as the San- 
hedrin of a later time. Kuenen’s famous attempt to 
prove that there never was such an assembly is brilliant, 
but beside the mark. What is implied in the term is 
that there was some kind of teaching authority having 
a continuous existence ; and that requirement is met by 
the fact that the Sopherim were a teaching authority, 
and continued to exercise that authority for nearly two 
centuries. They were the only religious teachers of their 


22 THE PHARISEES 


time, and it is not to be supposed that they taught in 
entire independence of each other. Some amount of 
consultation and, where necessary, of agreed decision, 
was indispensable, if there was to be any teaching at all. 
Moreover, ancient tradition ascribed to the Sopherim 
and to the Great Synagogue certain acts, decisions and 
declarations which can only be understood as proceeding 
from a body of teachers and not from an individual. 
The three precepts recorded in Aboth i. 1 are clearly 
intended as the watchwords of a collective body, and 
would be presumptuous if uttered merely by a single 
teacher. Also, there is to be found in various places in 
the Rabbinic literature a list, more or less complete, of 
Scripture texts which were ‘ corrected’ by the Sopherim, 
mpi ‘ypm. Amongst other places, this list is found in 
Tanhuma, Beshall.,t and after the last of the corrections 
the author of the Midrash goes on: “ For the men of 
the Great Synagogue read these verses otherwise; and 
they were called Sopherim because they counted all the 
letters in the Torah and interpreted it.” 2 

The writer of these words identifies the men of the 
Great Synagogue with the Sopherim in the clearest 
manner; and his identification is not affected by any 
later scruples about admitting that the Sopherim had 
corrected the sacred text. 

From the time of Ezra, then, down to the year 270 B.C. 
or thereabouts, the work of interpreting and teaching 
the Torah was carried on by those who, as individuals, 
were called Sopherim, and collectively were styled the 
Great Synagogue. Their teaching was necessarily based 
on the Torah; and their interpretation, Midrash, was 
presumably a simple explanation and application of the 
text to the case before them, whatever that might be. 

The decline and disappearance of the Sopherim, or the 


1 It is contained in the Jelammedenu portion, and will not be 
found in the Tanhuma as edited by Buber. I have used the Tanhuma 
printed at Lublin, 1879. The passage there occurs p. 87. — 

2 pnp wap od) adam no wax we pia wow xdx 

mex vey mnay mynis 55 pap pny 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 23 


Great Synagogue, is certainly connected in some way 
with the change in the political condition of the people 
brought about by their transference from Persian to 
Greek rule. Under Persian kings the Jewish community 
was able to order its religious life with little or no inter- 
ference from without. But when Judea came under the 
sway of a Greek sovereign, it began to feel that powerful 
and varied influence which is summed up under the name 
of Hellenism. It is easy to see how this new influence 
made the simple and peaceful practice of the religious 
life no longer possible for the Jew. But it is not clear 
why the Sopherim should have failed to deal with 
Hellenism, still less why, as an organised body of teachers, 
they totally disappeared. Simeon the Just would seem 
to have been the last representative of the old order, 
and to have left no successor. But why a man so emi: 
nent, and as his epithet shows, so highly respected, 
should have been unable to provide for the continuance 
of the teaching which till then had served the needs of 
the people, there is nothing to show. The religious 
history of the Jews is a blank from the death of Simeon 
for nearly a century. The last ray of light before the 
darkness closes down is the mention of Antigonos of 
Socho as having been a disciple of Simeon the Just 
(Aboth i. 3). Nothing is known of him except his saying 
recorded in Aboth (ibid.). His Greek name is noteworthy 
as an indication of the presence of the new influence of 
Hellenism. And, if there is anything of historic sub- 
stance in the story about his two disciples, found in 
Aboth de Rabbi Nathan (A, § 5), it points to dissensions 
and doubts amongst those who were or who should have 
been the teachers of the people. 

At the end of eighty years from the death of Simeon 
the Just, i.e. in or about the year 196 B.c., an important 
step was taken in the organisation of the religious, no 
less than of the political life of the Jewish people, by the 
establishment of a great council or senate, known, per- 
haps from the beginning, but certainly from an early 
date, as the Sanhedrin, a name which represents the 


24 THE PHARISEES 


Greek avvéSpiov. It is referred to, as the yepovota, in 
the letter attributed to Antiochus III and recorded by 
Josephus, Ant. xii. 3, 3 (see Lauterbach, Midrash and 
Mishnah, pp. 48, ff.). This Senate was not composed 
exclusively of priests, which is only natural if it were the 
chief council of the community for all public affairs. 
But, however much it may have been concerned with 
political questions, the Senate or Sanhedrin was the 
supreme authority in religious matters; and there is 
now for the first time a central religious authority of 
which some members were laymen. 

The assertion that the Sanhedrin was established at 
or about the date above mentioned is confirmed in a 
remarkable way by the statement of the Zadokite Frag- 
ment, edited by Schechter and also by Charles in his 
Apocr. and Pseudepigrapha II. It is there said (i. 5): 
“And in the period of the wrath three hundred and 
ninety years after He had given them into the hand of 
Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, He visited them, and 
He made to spring forth from Israel and Aaron a root 
of His planting to inherit His land.” The deportation 
under Nebuchadnezzar took place in 586 B.c. Three 
hundred and ninety years from that date brings us down 
to 196 B.c., the very time in which the Sanhedrin was 
founded. A Sanhedrin is not expressly mentioned, but 
the phrase used : ‘‘ A root from Israel and Aaron to inherit 
His land ’’ may well denote such a body, especially if it 
represented Israel as well as Aaron, i.e. laymen as well as 
priests. If there be here nothing but mere coincidence of 
date, the coincidence is certainly striking. 

The Zadokite Fragment seems to imply (76d. v. 6) that 
after this body had been in existence twenty years the 
group of dissentients whose views are set forth in the 
Fragment dissociated themselves from the Sanhedrin and 
withdrew to Damascus. This would be in 176 B.c. We 
may suppose, therefore, that during this period the 
deliberations of the Sanhedrin reflected the opinions of 
various groups or parties not entirely in accord with each 
other. Although we have no precise information as to 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 25 


these parties, we are not left wholly in the dark. There 
_ certainly must have been amongst its members a number 
who were more or less favourable to Hellenism; and it 
is no less certain that there were those also who were 
opponents of Hellenism and defenders of what may be 
called the religion of Torah. The Maccabean Revolt, 
_which broke out only a few years later, 167 B.c., affords 
_ clear proof that the conflicting opinions must have been 
gathering strength for many years, and they could not 
fail to be represented in the Sanhedrin, the chief council 
of the nation. 

But it is possible to get a little nearer to the facts. The 
Mishnah, Peah ii. 6, mentions the Zugoth, Pairs, and 
M. Hagg. ii. 2 gives their names, representing them to 
have been respectively President (Nasi) and Vice-President 
(Ab-beth-din) of the Sanhedrin. This they almost cer- 
tainly were not, for all the evidence goes to show that 
the High Priest always presided in the Sanhedrin. But 
this fact does not deprive the statement in the Mishnah 
of allits value. As there was certainly from the beginning 
a party in the Sanhedrin opposed to Hellenism and 
zealous for the Torah, it goes without saying that the 
“members of this party must have been able to consult 
together with a view to common action. Whether or not 
they organised themselves under a chosen leader, a leader 
or leaders there must have been; and it lies ready to 
hand to connect the appearance of the Zugoth with the 
earliest years of the Sanhedrin. The names of the first 
pair were José ben Joezer of Zerédah, and José ben 
Johanan of Jerusalem. Now Jose ben Joezer was cer- 
tainly living at the time of the Maccabean Revolt, and 
there is good reason for believing that he was one of the 
sixty who were treacherously murdered by Alkimus 
(x Macc. vii. ro-16, Ber. R. Ixv. 22, and see Gratz, 
G.d.J. li. 367, 369). This took place in 162 B.c. Jose 
ben Joezer was, it is said (Ber. R., bcd.) uncle of Alkimus, 
and presumably an old man at the time of his death. 
Moreover, those who came to Alkimus are called “a 
company of Scribes,’’ which in this connection certainly 


26 THE PHARISEES 


means teachers and exponents of Torah. It is reasonable 
therefore to suppose that Jose ben Joezer and Jose ben 
Johanan were leaders, in the Sanhedrin, of the party 
who upheld the Torah.? 


1 Jose ben Joezer was called (M. Peah ii. 7) mpimDSw wWDN 
which shows that he was a Hasid and also a priest. It is recorded 
in a Baraitha (b. Shabb. 14") that 73 ‘Dy) AAT wre My yD DI 

ny omasr >> Sy) onyn pas by meow mn oder we pon’ 

Two points in connection with this statement are worth atten- 
tion. The object of the decree that the land of Gentiles was unclean 
was presumably to deter Jews from living there. Now the Zadokite 
Fragment states that after twenty years from the foundation of 
the Sanhedrin (if this be the correct interpretation), and in any 
case in or about the year 176 B.c., the dissentient party of Zadokites 
receded to Damascus, which was certainly in a Gentile land. Was 
the decree of the two Joses (presumably a decision of the Torah 
party, if not a decree of the Sanhedrin) aimed at the dissentient 
Zadokites, either before or after their session? The conjecture 
seems plausible. The Baraitha above quoted is made the subject 
of a discussion in the Talmud (ibid. 15a), because it conflicts with 
another and somewhat precise chronological statement. When 
R. Ishmael b. José (b. Halaphta) was on his deathbed, Rabbi sent 
to him the request that he would relate two or three of the things 
which he had heard from his father. He stated the following : 
my 'B Syn Sy ayenn mado mowa nan ain xbw sp my B!p 
yoy maar ‘55 os myn yar Sy mNow mt man an Now Ww 
Now if the decrees here mentioned were made eighty years before 
the destruction of the Temple, i.e. 10 B.c., they could not have been 
made by the two Joses. The Talmud does not, so far as I can 
see, solve the difficulty, and in what it does say it uses a phrase 
which seems to have led Gr&tz astray. It says that the decrees 
were made by the mw ox OwT yan. Gratz, Gd.J. il. 484, 
takes this to indicate a Beth Din not otherwise known by that 
name, and he identifies it with the disciples of Hillel and Shammai. 
But in that case why were they not called the Beth Hillel and Beth 
Shammai, as in every other case? I take the eighty years to be 
merely borrowed from the declaration of R. Ishmael ben Jose. 
They are the Rabbis (whoever they may have been) who, according 
to him, made their decree eighty years before the destruction of 
the Temple. This leaves the original difficulty unsolved. There 
seems to be something wrong with R. Ishmael’s chronology, and 
I suggest an emendation of it. Whatever may be referred to in 
the first statement, ‘‘one hundred and eighty years before the 
Temple was destroyed,” that at least gives a date, viz. I1O B.C. 
I suggest that the eighty years next mentioned were reckoned not 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 27 


The history of the Maccabean Revolt shows further 
that among the defenders of the Torah there was an 
extreme and also a moderate party. The former were 
called by a special name, Hasidim, *Agoidaior. The 
latter had no distinctive name, as they were the majority. 
The Hasidim had no other interest in the Revolt beyond 
the desire to practise the religion of Torah unhindered. 
They only joined the forces of Judas Maccabeus when 
they saw that the religion of Torah could not be defended 
except by war. And they were the first to make over- 
tures for peace, after the earlier victories. All who joined 
Judas were zealous for the Torah, beyond a doubt; but 
the Revolt was an attempt to secure political as well as 
religious freedom, as became apparent in the rise of the 
Maccabean chiefs to sovereignty. 

We shall therefore be not far from the truth if we 
represent the Sanhedrin, in the years from its foundation 
down to the outbreak of the Maccabean Revolt, as an 
_ Assembly of priests and laymen, some of whom inclined 
to Hellenism while others opposed it out of loyalty to 
the Torah ; and if we further assume that of the defenders 
of the Torah some were more strict than others in their 
view of what was required for its fulfilment. That the 
Sanhedrin must have claimed and exercised supreme 
authority in deciding religious questions goes without 
saying; but it is only reasonable to suppose that the 
upholders of Torah, who included teachers amongst their 
number, had their own means of defining and teaching 
their opinions upon matters of religious practice. 

When the Maccabean Revolt had resulted in victory, 


prior to the destruction of the Temple, but prior to the date just 
given. This would give the date 190 B.c., which brings it within 
the time of Jose ben Joezer, though somewhat earlier than the 
date arrived at above. The change in the text would be that 
instead of man a9n xSw sy now’p we should read xbw sy mow’ 
3) mado mown which is easily explained from the occurrence 
of nan ann in the previous line. I know of no MS. authority 
- for this emendation; but at least it makes the statement of 
R. Ishmael intelligible, and brings it into remarkable conformity 
with the Baraitha. 


28 THE PHARISEES 


one of its most important consequences was the rise of 
the leading family to sovereign power. Simeon (142- 
135 B.C.) the brother of Judas and of Jonathan (162- 
142 B.C.) secured the political independence of the Jewish 
people, and was virtually king though he exercised his 
authority only as High Priest. He was succeeded by his 
son, known as John Hyrkanus (135-105 B.c.), or John 
the High Priest. He also did not assume the title of 
king, though in all other respects he was king. As 
Schiirer points out (G.d.J.V.' i. 213), he was the first to 
put his name on the coins, a sign of the growing tendency 
of the Hasmonean House towards kingship. These facts 
are of importance for the religious no less than for the 
political history of the time. For it was pointed out 
above that amongst the Torah party were those, the 
Hasidim, who had no sympathy with the political aspect 
of the Maccabean Revolt, and who withdrew from all 
share in its later developments so soon as religious free- 
dom had been won. Now the name Hasidim, as 
denoting a party, does not appear again after the Macca- 
bean period. And of course Hellenism, after the suc- 
cessful defiance of Antiochus Epiphanes, was no longer 
the enemy to be fought. But the former aversion to 
the mingling of political ambition with maintenance of the 
religion of Torah revived again as the heads of the 
Hasmonean House tended more and more to become 
princes, and were no longer content to be High Priests. 
Again, therefore, there appeared a divergence between 
two groups or parties in the Sanhedrin, and amongst the 
people. All were now upholders of Torah; and so long 
as the Hasmonean House held the sovereign power there 
was no question of disowning it. But the party most 
closely associated with the government, i.e. the priestly 
families and the nobility, were of necessity concerned 
with political questions and were not inclined to let 
their devotion to Torah restrict their freedom to work 
for the political interests of what was now the kingdom. 
They were unwilling to allow the claims of the Torah to 
be extended beyond the written word of the Pentateuch. 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 29 


They took their stand on the text of the Torah as Ezra 
had read it, and as the heads of the people had pledged 
their countrymen to obey it. They would not allow the 
validity of the Oral Tradition as an interpretation of the 
Torah whereby its authority could be extended indefi- 
nitely into every department of life. (See the fuller 
treatment of this view and of the opposite one in the 
chapter on Torah and Tradition.) 

On the other hand, those who were not associated 
with the government, and who were in close touch with 
the rank and file of the people, were chiefly concerned 
to uphold the Torah in its purity, and to guard it from 
the intrusion of worldly considerations. They held that 
it was a divine revelation, intended for the guidance of 
Israel in every act of life, and claiming the obedience of 
every member of the nation. Moreover, they held that 
it was given to all Israel, and that the duty of teaching 
and interpreting it was the privilege not of the’ priests 
alone, but of every one, priest or layman, who had the 
necessary knowledge. For them, Torah took precedence 
of everything else, and Torah not merely as the written 
text of the Pentateuch, but as the divine teaching con- 
tained in the Oral Tradition and finding there its only 
true interpretation. 

The foregoing discussion has brought us to the time of 
the Hasmonean princes; and it was during the reign of 
one of these, John Hyrkanus (135-105 B.c.) that the name 
Pharisee almost certainly made its first appearance. 
Those who came to be called by that name had held the 
principles already set forth in regard to the Torah for 
some considerable time; but in the reign of Hyrkanus 
they took a step which, amongst other things, led to the 
common use of the name Pharisee as their distinctive 
epithet. The full significance of this fact, or rather of 
the evidence upon which the statement is based, has not 
hitherto, so far as I know, been clearly brought out. 

Hyrkanus, as High Priest and virtual king, was con- 
cerned, not merely for the extension of his power by the 
defeat of his enemies, but also for the internal affairs, 


30 THE PHARISEES 


and especially the religious affairs of the Jewish people. 
There are indications to show that he took measures to 
reform the abuses which had crept in during the time 
since the Maccabean Revolt, in regard to the observance 
of the Torah. Josephus does not mention this in his 
account of the reign of Hyrkanus; but there are some 
brief references in the Talmud of whose historical worth 
I know no reason to doubt. A passage (b. Kidd, 66%.) 
will be given below, in connection with the rupture between 
the Pharisees and the Sadducees, which shows that even 
in the fourth century c.£. the Rabbis had good information 
in regard to the reign of Hyrkanus. 

The particular reform which concerns us at present 
had reference to the payment of tithes of the produce of 
the soil, as required by the Torah. Hyrkanus sent out 
a sort oi commission of inquiry through the country, 
which found that all the farmers offered the ‘ terumah,’ 
but that in regard to the tithe and the second tithe some 
gave it and others did not.t| Hyrkanus therefore ordered 
that the farmer should only make the required declaration 
that he had separated the ‘terumah,’ and he abolished 
the declaration that he had also separated the tithes 
(samm Sua); at the same time he threw the responsi- 
bility of separating the tithe upon the person who bought 
the produce from the farmer, which was to be considered 
as ‘nn open to doubt as regards tithe (watm Sy 712). 

The object of this regulation was to provide for the 
proper separation of the tithes required by the Torah, by 
no means to annui it. But Hyrkanus did not leave the 


tT, Sot. xiii, ro: +S tron ne Saray mn Sy 3 Nin, AN 
mévqa movin sox pomp on Node oma oe omy Soa nowy 
SON PWD PR INNO), PWD NYPD Uw wer pwN wo 7253 
ov NUP DIN AAD 92D PY Wyd manny Any py AYN 
sxvmr myon by dSSymp rw sewer qnsd ima awed) Apiind 
sy man voy mano wy Dy wn qwyD 

I have given the text according to the Vienna MS. and the printed 
editions as found in Zuckermandel. The Erfurt MS. ascribes the 
above to Johanan b. Zaccai, which is absurd. The Vienna MS. 
reads ‘‘ Johanan the High Priest,” and this is confirmed by j. Sot. 


ix. 11; cp., j. Ma. Sh. v. 9. 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 381 


matter here. He appointed inspectors to see that the 
tithes were properly separated ;! and, whether he himself 
took the initiative or only gave his approval to the action 
of others, there was formed a voluntary association of 
those who definitely pledged themselves to separate their 
tithes in accordance with Torah. It is not, so far as I 
know, expressly stated that this institution was founded 
in the reign of Hyrkanus; but it certainly was not later, 
and there is no reason to place it earlier. If it had been 
earlier, then there would have been no need for the 
reforms of Hyrkanus. Why it cannot have been later 
will be seen presently. The members of this association 
called themselves nan, habérim, companions, and they 
pledged themselves not merely in regard to tithes but in 
general to maintain in their own practice the laws of 
clean and unclean laid down in the Torah. There were 
four grades of oman, ranged one above the other in 
accordance with the increasing strictness of their practice. 
These grades are enumerated in M. Hagg. i. 7.2 The 
passage runs as follows: The garments of the “ people 
of the land, Am-ha-aretz, are a source of uncleanness to 
the Pherushim; those of the Pherushim to the eaters of 
“terumah’; those of the eaters of terumah to the eaters 
of what is sacred; those of the eaters of what is sacred 


tj. Sot. ix.12. "yy man woyny oxot by Siw qm pe yen 
The word ny)3}7 is not one which would be naturally used to describe 
inspectors, and the question suggests itself whether there is any 
connection between these ny3y~ and the famous pairs of teachers 
already mentioned (see above, p. 25 and M. Peahii. 6). It has been 
thought that these latter were instituted by Hyrkanus; which is 
clearly impossible, because Jose b. Joezer, one of the first pair, was 
murdered in the Maccabean Revolt, thirty years before the reign 
of Hyrkanus began. It is possible that Hyrkanus made the nit 
of his own time and later responsible for the oversight of the tithes ; 
but in that case we should expect to find nin. It seems to me 
more likely that Hyrkanus appointed inspectors to act two 
together in each district, which would be a much more effectual 

precaution. 
apn vSx5 pat perme saa pened op yon, oy pa 
3 mpy-nxond pvp wp saa: emp> on ADM ‘Sow D2 
Hie Pb wsipd DIT NAY ANN ADINIIwY WON A TWy 


82 THE PHARISEES 


to those who use [the water of sprinkling] the sin 
offering. Joseph b. Joezer was a hasid of the priest- 
hood, and his kerchief was a source of uncleanness to the 
eaters of what is sacred.” This passage is full of technical 
terms which would need much explanation; but what is 
of importance for the present purpose is that the members 
of the first class are called Pherushim, i.e. Pharisees.t 
The word means “separated,” and the separation is 
obviously that between the members of the association 
man on the one hand, and the Am-ha-aretz, the people 
of the land, on the other. The higher grades of oan 
were all within the association, marked off from each 
other, but all alike separated from the Am-ha-aretz. 
The Pherushim as a class marked the actual line of 
separation, and that is clearly what their name implies. 
As the lowest order of nam they would be the most 
numerous, because the severer tests of the higher grades 
would be satisfied only by a smaller and smaller number 
of men. The passage under consideration mentions that 
Jose b. Joezer, a saint, hasid, of the priesthood, was 
only in the second grade. This is the same Jose b. Joezer 


t Pherushim, pwyp, is the Hebrew form. The name Pharisee 
has passed into the English language through the Greek ¢apicaiog 
or perhaps the Latin of the Vulgate, Phariseus, which represents 
nw Pharishaia. This is the Aramaic plural form, which would 
be naturally used in the common speech of the people. ‘Pherushim ’ 
presumably remained as the name used by the Pharisees themselves, 
when they had occasion to use it, and by them more often as signify- 
ing an abstainer than as denoting one holding the principles of 
Pharisaism. The original name by which the Pharisees designated 
themselves seems to have been Sx ‘Dn, the Wise of Israel, 
as in the passage presently to be given from b. Kidd. 66*. That 
does not mean that they claimed to be the only wise members of 
the nation. It is used, as opposed to o°9n3 ‘M5n the wise among 
the priests, to indicate those who were wise, i.e. competent to 
interpret Torah, not being priests but laymen. The name embodies 
their challenge of the exclusive right of the priests to interpret 
Torah (see Lauterbach, Sadducees and Pharisees, pp. 190 et seqg.). When 
the Pharisees were left as the only interpreters and teachers of 
Torah, they dropped the distinctive word Israel and called them- 
selves pxODNA the Wise, as may be seen on wellnigh every page 
of the Mishnah. 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 38 


who has been mentioned above, p. 25, as one of the 
first pair of teachers, and leader of the Torah party in 
the early Sanhedrin. The mention of him in this con- 
nection does not necessarily imply that the association 
existed in his time, but only that he would, if he were 
living, be in the second grade. At the same time it is 
possible that something of the kind did exist in his time, 
on a small scale and as a private society, and that in the 
reign of Hyrkanus the idea of such an association was 
taken up and made general. But, however this may be, 
the point at present is, that the association is most 
probably to be connected with the reform of Hyrkanus. 
Its purpose, as already stated, was to maintain in practice 
the laws of clean and unclean, as well as the due payment 
of tithes and the like, and it stands to reason that its 
members would be just those who were most zealous for 
the Torah. Therefore, those whose principles in regard 
to the Torah have already been explained, the descendants 
of the Sopherim and the Hasidim would be the most 
eager to join the association and become nwman. They 
must of necessity begin with the first grade, whatever 
rank they might reach afterwards; and thus they all 
became Pherushim, Pharisees. That was the primarily 
distinctive name which applied to them all, and the only 
one of general importance. And that remained their 
name as distinguishing them from the Sadducees ; because 
the latter, while quite as eager for the maintenance of 
levitical purity, etc., differed from those who had come 
to be called Pharisees in respect of their views upon the 
interpretation of Torah.! 

So it came about that the Pharisees, who were chiefly 
important in history from their attitude towards Torah, 
got their name from a particular phase of their practice, 


t The name Pharisee is sometimes thought to be derived from 
wb meaning to interpret, but in that case their name ought to 
have been pw 5, which is never specially applied to them. 
Moreover, this particular meaning of wp rests on the idea of 
‘separating,’ and thus we are led back to the explanation adopted 
in the text. 

8 


34 THE PHARISEES 


which marked them off, not from the Sadducees, but from 
the Am-ha-aretz. And this will explain why the name 
Pharisee, phariish, is used in a two-fold sense, either as 
denoting those who held a particular theory of the inter- 
pretation of Torah, or as denoting those who practised 
certain forms of abstinence in regard to food and the 
like. The word mwp, pherishuth, is regularly used in 
the philosophical Hebrew of the Middle Ages to denote 
abstinence, and not the general principles of the Pharisees. 
(See Bahya, Hoboth-ha-lebaboth, where a whole chapter 
is devoted to pherishuth.) This also perhaps explains 
why the Pharisees, as religious teachers, did not often 
use the name in referring to themselves. True, they 
were ‘pherushim’” in the strict sense; but that name 
only indicated one department of their practice, and not 
the broad principle which led to that practice and to 
much else besides. 

It was said above that the institution of the association, 
of which the first grade of its members was that of the 
“ pherushim,’ was not earlier than the reign of Hyrkanus, 
and could not have been later. The reason why it could 
not have been later is simply that the name ‘ pherushim ’ 
is used to denote the opponents of the Sadducees in the 
story of the rupture between them which will be dealt. 
with below. Otherwise, it might be argued that since 
the statement about the four grades is found only in 
the Mishnah it might be as late as the second, or even 
the third, century c.E. But both Josephus and the New 
Testament are evidence of the common use of the name 
Pharisee at a much earlier date; and also Rashi, in his 
commentary on the passage in the Mishnah, Hagg. 18°, 
says that all these grades were instituted by the 
Sopherim. 

Finally, the explanation here given is in accordance 
with the statement of Josephus (Ant. xvii. 2, 4) that in 
his time the Pharisees numbered above six thousand 
men. These are the actual members of the association. 
The great majority of the people, who willingly recognised 
their authority as religious teachers and followed their 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 85 


lead, were not themselves Pharisees. Strictly speaking, 
in relation to the Pharisees, the majority of the people 
were of the Am-ha-aretz class; but in that class there 
must have been all types of Jews, from those who were 
just not Pharisees to those who wholly disregarded the 
injunctions of the Torah. 

Such, I believe, to have been the way in which the name 
Pharisee came to be attached to those religious leaders 
and teachers who developed the theory of the interpre- 
tation of Torah mentioned above. Their interpretation 
went beyond the written word of the Torah, and called 
in the aid of the unwritten tradition. This was the 
fundamental ground of difference between them and their 
opponents, to whom the name Sadducee was applied. 
But while the appearance of the name Pharisee can be 
dated with approximate certainty as shown above, the 
principles of the men who came to bear that name had 
been developed through a long period of time, being the 
result of the labours of the earlier Sopherim. And, in 
like manner, the name Sadducee may have been first 
brought into use at some definite date, perhaps much 
about the same time as the name Pharisee; but the 
principles represented by the bearers of the name Sad- 
ducee were much older, dating from the time when con- 
scious opposition began to be felt and expressed towards 
the Oral Tradition appealed to in support of the inter- 
pretation of Torah. | 

It will be seen, therefore, that there was no sudden 
divergence between the two parties, no moment at which 
they definitely came into being. They represent two 
conflicting views, slowly developed into increasing clear- 
ness, of the true meaning of Torah and of its bearing 
upon the national life, and they probably found some 
expression, even in the very early days of the Sanhedrin. 
The Pharisees did not revive the name of the Hasidim, 
and probably did not themselves choose the name Pharisee ; 
possibly they modified some of their practices, but in 
essentials they were the Hasidim over again. The Sad- 
ducees, on the other hand, were by no means a revival 


36 THE PHARISEES 


of the Hellenists,' either in fact or in principle. Yet the 
Sadducees were only new in so far as their policy was 
shaped by the successful issue of the Maccabean Revolt. 
If the prophets of old had denounced the rulers of their 
time for intriguing with foreign powers (e.g. Isa. xxxi), 
those rulers judged of the needs of the kingdom from 
the worldly, not the prophetic point of view, and no 
doubt had strong reasons for what they did. The 
Hellenists had done the same in their time, not qua 
Heilenists, but as believing that the friendship of the 
Greek kings was in the best interests of the Jewish people. 
Similarly the Hasmonean rulers, and the party most 
closely associated with them, sought to promote the 
interests of the kingdom by political as well as religious 
methods; and the party in question did this not qud 
Sadducees but gud rulers and associates of rulers. The 
two names, Pharisee and Sadducee, whatever their origin 
may have been, were attached to two parties whose 
principles were much older, and only modified in their 
expression by the particular circumstances of the time. 
But while it is impossible to point to an exact date 
at which the Sadducees and the Pharisees began, except 
in name, to exist as distinct parties, it is possible to 
determine (at least with much probability) the time when 
the difference between them led to an open and declared 
separation. Both in Josephus and the Talmud an inci- 
dent is described which can hardly be other than the 
occasion of the final breach between the Sadducees and 
the Pharisees. Josephus (Ant. xiii. 10, 5-6) has the 
following: ‘‘ This prosperous state of affairs moved the 
Jews to envy Hyrkanus [i.e. John Hyrkanus, the High 
Priest]; but they that were the worst disposed to him 
were the Pharisees, who are one of the sects of the Jews, 
as we have informed you already. These have so great 


1 Halevy, in his Doroth Harishonim, maintains that the Sadducees ~ 
were identical with the Hellenists, and pours scorn, after his manner, 
upon Weiss, Gratz and Schiirer for not sharing that opinion. See 
the whole section of his book which treats of the Sadducees, etc., 


Ic. pp. 359-502. 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM = 37 


power over the multitude that when they say anything 
against the King or against the High Priest, they are 
presently believed. Now Hyrkanus was a disciple of 
theirs, and greatly beloved by them. And when he 
once invited them to a feast, and entertained them very 
kindly, when he saw them in a good humour, he began 
to say to them that they knew he was desirous to be a 
righteous man and to do all things whereby he might 
please God, which was the profession of the Pharisees 
also. However, he desired that if any observed him 
offending in any point and going out of the right way 
they would call him back and correct him. On which 
occasion they testified to his being entirely virtuous ; 
with which commendation he was well pleased; but 
still there was one of his guests there, whose name was 
Eleazar, a man of an ill temper, and delighting in sedi- 
tious practices. This man said: ‘Since thou desirest 
to know the truth, if thou wilt be righteous in earnest, 
lay down the high priesthood and content thyself with 
the civil government of the people.’ And when he 
[Hyrkanus] inquired why he should lay down the high 
priesthood, ‘ Because,’ said he [Eleazar] ‘we have heard 
from our elders that thy mother had been a captive 
in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes.’ The statement was 
false, and Hyrkanus was furious with him, and all the 
Pharisees were deeply hurt. 6. Now there was one, 
Jonathan, a very great friend of Hyrkanus, but of the 
sect of the Sadducees, whose principles are the opposite 
to those of the Pharisees. He said that Eleazar had, in 
casting that reproach against him, uttered the sentiments 
of all the Pharisees, and that this would become apparent 
if he asked them what punisnment the offender deserved. 
So when Hyrkanus asked the Pharisees what punishment 
they thought he deserved (for he was sure that the insult 
had not been approved by them if they gave sentence 
according to the justice of the case) they said, ‘ Stripes 
and fetters, but that it did not seem right to inflict death 
for speaking evil’; the fact being that the Pharisees 
are inclined to mild punishments. Hyrkanus was very 


38 THE PHARISEES 


angry at this, and concluded that the man had insulted 
him with their approval. Jonathan especially urged him 
on, and so influenced him as to attach himself to the 
party of the Sadducees and oppose that of the Pharisees, 
and to annul all the decrees they had imposed on the 
people and to punish those who observed them. From 
this source arose the hatred which he and his sons met 
with from the people.” 

That is the account given by Josephus, and I have 
given it in full for the sake of its importance and also 
for the purpose of comparison with the Talmudic account. 
This I now give! from b. Kidd, 66%. “An incident 
relating to King Jannai, who went to Kochlith in the 
desert and captured there sixty fortresses, And on his 
return he made great rejoicing, and he called to all the 
Wise of Israel and said to them, ‘ Our fathers used to 
eat salted (herbs ?) while they were engaged in building 
the Temple. Let us also eat salted herbs in memory of 
our fathers.’ And they served salted herbs upon golden 
tables, and they did eat. There was one there, a man 
of mockery, of a bad heart, a vile fellow, by name Eleazar 
ben Poirah. And Eleazar ben Poirah said to King 


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yaw yanx Sword ana ans mn mln an. 95 a5 an ses 
yam doa) NDI ND) DIT wpa DIT. Maw) 1X DDN ~ 
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MWY AD PT NT sD dysa yD) 5 ANN) wT NIT TD Ox ura 
ANI) 7D. NT Moy NAN AD AM) ODA “ny? yow ANN DR 
TO pny 92 yO) 39 TN Wd) NAY 9 AYIA FD Mr psa 
byaw mn anzaw myn mn spn? my MAT Mp DK 13 APTN 
man 55 wm) AyD ya ods oT Oy my nn yen) I ND AD 
mx oainm now /3 pynw saw ay ominwno odyn mm dxqwn 

smwy> ann 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 389 


Jannai, ‘King Jannai, the heart of the Pharisees is 
against thee.’ ‘And what shall I do?’ ‘ Prove them 
by means of the gold plate which is between thine eyes.’ 
And he proved them by means of the gold plate which 
was between his eyes. There was there an old man, by 
name Jehudah ben Gedidiah. And Jehudah ben Gedidiah 
said to King Jannai, ‘ King Jannai, enough for thee the 
crown of royalty; leave the crown of priesthood to the 
seed of Aaron.’ For people said that his mother had 
been a captive in Modiim. And inquiry was made but 
no truth was found fin the report]. And the Wise 
of Israel withdrew in anger. And Eleazar ben Poirah 
said to King Jannai, ‘ King Jannai, such is the treat- 
ment of a private man of Israel, and such is the treatment 
of thee though thou art King and High Priest.’ ‘ And 
what shall I do?’ ‘If thou wilt hearken to my counsel, 
crush them.’ ‘And the Torah, what will become of 
Pattee eit is rolled up and left in a. corner. 
Whoso wishes to learn let him come and learn.’ [Rab 
Nahman b. Itzhak said, ‘Straightway unbelief was 
injected in him; for he ought to have said, ‘ There is 
no need to fear for the Written Torah ; what will become 
of the Unwritten Torah ?]: And straightway the evil 
sprouted through the act of Eleazar ben Poirah, and 
they slew all the Wise of Israel and the world was 
desolate until Simeon ben Shetah came and restored the 
Torah to its former state.” 

There can be no doubt that the same event is referred 
to in both these narratives, in spite of the difference in 
their details. Thus there is an Eleazar in both, and he 
is the mischief-maker in both. Josephus says that he 
was one of the guests, and thus by implication a 
Pharisee ; the Talmud does not call him a Sadducee but 
represents him as the adviser of the King against the 
Pharisees. Jonathan does not appear in the Talmud 


t The clause in brackets is part of the text as it appears in the 
Talmud. Itisanote by an Amora upon the story, which is resumed 
at the words “and the evil, etc.’’ The difference of language in 
the original shows this clearly. 


40 THE PHARISEES 


version ; and the part he played in persuading the King 
to join the Sadducees is ascribed to Eleazar. Clearly, 
therefore, the two narratives cannot be brought into 
exact harmony.! But the question which of the two is 
the more credible cannot be disposed of by giving at 
once the preference to Josephus on the ground that he 
is much earlier in time and by so much the nearer to 
the event described. It is true that the story is cited 
in the Talmud by Abaji, who lived in the fourth century 
(d. c.E. 338). But, in the first place, he cited it as a 
Baraitha, which means that it is not later than the 
Mishnah. And, in the second place, the very remarkable 
style of the Hebrew shows that it is much earlier than 
the Mishnah, for.its Hebrew is almost purely Biblical 
and not that of the Mishnah at all.2 It is therefore 
highly probable that our passage was written within no 
long time after the event which it describes.3 How it 
came to be written, whether it is a fragment of some 


t Kohler, in J.£., art. “ Pharisees,’”’ says that this story is un- 
historical, but he gives no reasons for his view. Whatever may 
be the truth in regard to minor details, the main outlines of the 
story are surely historical. 

2 In the few lines of the passage there are seven instances of the 
Vav consecutive with the imperfect, a grammatical form which 
does not appear in the Mishnah, but is still found in the Hebrew 
text of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus) l. 11, 12, 16, 18, 19, 21. It is 
not used consistently either in Ben Sira or in the Talmud passage, 
but it is used. If the author had been a late imitator of Biblical 
Hebrew, he would have been careful to make frequent use of an 
idiom so characteristic of classical Hebrew. See, e.g. the version 
of this same story in Jos. ben Gorion, iv. 6. The story about 
Simeon the Just and Alexander in b. Joma, 69a, also does not con- 
tain an instance of Vav consecutive. 

3 As Simeon b. Shetah is mentioned, the story was written after 
the recovery of the Pharisees from the persecution to which they 
had been exposed as the result of the breach with the king. But 
the story confuses John Hyrkanus with his son and successor, 
Alexander Jannzus. This is shown partly by the fact that the 
King is called Jannai, and partly by the fact that the massacre of 
Pharisees, 377°}, was the act of Jannzus and not of Hyrkanus. 
The latter is said to have contented himself with annulling the 
ordinances of the Pharisees, 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 41 


historical work of which all else is lost, there is nothing 
to show. But there it is, bearing the marks of its 
antiquity on its face. 

It is equally uncertain what was the source from which 
Josephus derived his version of the story. Schiirer 
holds that it was merely founded on popular tradition, 
and not on any written authority. If this be so, then 
the version in Josephus is less reliable than the Talmudic 
version, on the assumption of its early date as suggested 
above. All that can safely be said is that we have here 
two versions of the same incident, not very far removed 
in time from the date when the incident took place. 
Josephus has taken the substance of the story and told 
it in his own way. The author of the Baraitha com- 
pressed the story into such small compass that it is only 

interpreted with difficulty. 

_ Josephus uses the name Pharisee freely throughout 
the story, and evidently has no doubt that that name 
is correctly applied to the party which opposed the king ; 
yet he does not make any of the speakers use the name. 
In the Talmud version it is used once, but then only by 
EFleazar, the enemy of the Pharisees. The Talmudic 
version is, of course, a Pharisaic document, and its name 
for the king’s opponents is )x-ws ‘22M, the Wise of Israel. 
It is thus conceivable that the name Pharisee had not 
come into general use at the time of the incident, and 
that it was first applied as a nickname by the opponents 
ofthe party. Lauterbach suggests (‘‘ Sadducees and Phari- 
sees’’ in Kohler Festschrift, p. 196) that Eleazar may 
have used another name, for which own», Pharisees, 
was afterwards substituted. But he inclines to think 
that mwie is right, and he finds the explanation of the 
name in the separation which took place, and as merely 
a synonym of ov>122. But this can hardly be correct, 
for Eleazar used the name owvmp before the separation 
took place. It was only after the quarrel that they 
departed, separated themselves, 12%. Moreover, if 
the name ovy729 was in use there was no reason for 
inventing another name of precisely the same meaning. 


42 THE PHARISEES 


I hold that the name Pharisee was in existence before 
the quarrel, presumably as that of the haberim already 
mentioned, and that it was now applied as a term of 
abuse or mockery on the part of their opponents. And 
while it is no doubt true that the name Pharisee was 
thenceforth accepted in common usage as the distinctive 
name of the party, as is evident from the Gospels, it is 
remarkable that the members of that party very seldom 
used it when speaking of themselves. 

Both versions agree in making the cause of offence a 
challenge to the king that he should lay down the High 
Priesthood and content himself with the royal office. 
According to Josephus, the Pharisees disowned the man 
who had given the challenge, but secretly approved his 
action, and for this reason they appointed only a com- 
paratively light punishment for him. According to the 
Talmud, it was one of the Pharisees themselves who 
gave the challenge, viz. Jehudah ben Gedidiah, who is 
not blamed, although his action led to the separation. 
But, again according to the Talmud, it was the king 
who had provoked the challenge, and that of set purpose. 

The extreme compression of the Talmud story needs 
some expansion if it is to be understood. The king 
was told by Eleazar that the hearts of the Pharisees were 
against him. He asked what he should do in order to 
obtain proof of this. Eleazar advised him to put them 
to the test by wearing the special mark of his office as 
High Priest, to see what they would say. This is curious ; 
because it might be expected that the Pharisees would 
accept him as High Priest, but would object to his 
assumption of royalty. And perhaps that was what the 
king expected. The objection made, however, was to his 
being High Priest, on the ground that his mother had 
been a captive in Modiim, and that he himself was under 
suspicion of illegitimacy. The objection seems a weak 
one, and indeed proved to be unfounded. The punish- 
ment of the offender is not mentioned in the Talmud, 


t The clearest instance I know is M. Jad. iv. 6, where Johanan 
b, Zaccai uses the name when speaking on behalf of his own party. 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 43 


but is clearly implied, and presumably was that indicated 
in Josephus, viz. stripes and fetters. Punishment, deemed 
to be inadequate, is implied in the Talmud story, for 
Eleazar contrasts the condition of the private citizen so 
lightly punished with that of the king so grossly insulted. 
This was said after the Pharisees had departed in anger 
(or perhaps with gloomy looks, see Levy, N.H.W. s.v. nyt) ; 
and it is not explained why they departed, nor why they 
were disturbed in mind. The king, after they were 
gone, and when Eleazar had pointed the lesson of what 
had just taken place, asked him what he should do next. 
Eleazar advised him to crush his opponents. And what 
will become of the Torah, in that case? was the king’s 
question. A remark which shows how the position of 
the Pharisees as teachers of Torah was admitted. If 
they were crushed, who was going to carry on their 
work of teaching the people? Eleazar gave a thoroughly 
Sadducean answer: The Torah is safely put away; 
anyone who wishes to learn let him come and learn. 
In other words, let him come and ask the priests as had 
been the ancient custom, and not expect to have it brought 
to him according to the newer fashion of the Pharisees. 
The reference to the Torah is not found in the Josephus 
version of the story; and whether or not the king 
actually alluded to it, the story as told from the Pharisaic 
side naturally emphasises the importance of the Torah 
as a factor in the case. The Amora, R. Nahman b. 
Itzhak, whose comment interrupts the story, noticed this. 
He pointed out that the real danger was in regard to the 
Unwritten Torah, which was the especial concern of the 
Pharisees. As tothe Written Torah, that was in no danget ; 
the Sadducees, no less than the Pharisees, accepted it. 

The story then concludes by saying that this was the 
beginning of unbelief * in the king, i.e. of his rejection 

1 The word used is n\p1\p’pX, the regular term in the Talmudic 
literature for unbelief. If pip’psx, “‘ unbeliever,’’ is not derived 
from ‘Epicurus,’ there was certainly an allusion to that name. 
Since Epicurus held that Gods took no heed of human ills, it was 


not unnatural for the Jew to apply the name Epicurus to one for 
whom, in practice, the divine reality did not exist. 


44 THE PHARISEES 


of the Pharisaic system of Oral Tradition, that he slew 
all the Pharisaic teachers, and that there was no place 
for them and their teaching until Simeon ben Shetah 
came and restored the Torah, i.e. the Unwritten Torah, 
to its old place of honour. | 

Finally, the date of the separation between the Pharisees 
and the Sadducees must, on the evidence of the story 
which has been examined, be placed near the end of the 
reign of John Hyrkanus, i.e. somewhat before 105 B.C.E. 

Before tracing further the history of the Pharisees as 
a party, it will be well to consider the meaning of the 
separation between them and the Sadducees. The unity 
of the people which had made possible the success of the 
Maccabean Revolt was now definitely at an end. That 
unity had only been possible on the common ground of © 
defence of the Torah as the charter of the national 
religion. In that defence were associated those whose 
chief, or indeed only, desire was for liberty to live according 
to the Torah, and those whose desire was as much 
and perhaps even more for freedom from the rule of a 
non-Jewish sovereign. Both desires were fulfilled, and 
for some years there was no divergence between their ad- 
herents. But neither party ceased to exist; and, as the 
political aims of the Hasmonean princes became more 
evident with the increase of their power, the non- 
political, purely religious aims of the Pharisees also 
became more evident, supported as they were by the 
great majority of the people. John Hyrkanus, when he 
broke with the Pharisees, can have been under no mis- 
apprehension as to what he was risking; and that may 
have been the reason why he delayed the rupture so 
long. He knew that he would no longer have the people 
behind him; and though they might be of little account 
in his political schemes, he knew by the experience of 
his house what their stubborn devotion to the Torah 
could mean. If now the nation fell asunder again, there 
would be no more unity, unless by some such desperate 
means as had brought the people to the side of Judas 
Maccabeus. And another revolt would necessarily in 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 45 


volve the ruin of the Hasmonean House. In point of 
fact there was no unity any more. Even in the war 
against the .Romans, when Jerusalem fell, there were 
divided counsels amongst the leaders, though all were 
fighting for their lives; and in the last desperate struggle 
under Bar Cocheba, though so great a man as R. Akiba 
espoused his cause, there were yet many who stood 
aloof. 

From the time of the breach between the Pharisees 
and the Sadducees there were in the nation a non-political 
party whose chief concern was for religion, and a party 
which, while by no means indifferent to religion, com- 
bined with it the conduct of political affairs. This dis- 
tinction is of importance, especially in regard to the 
Pharisees. They remained, so far as possible, a non- 
political party, standing aloof from the strife which 
shattered the Hasmonean House under the sons of Jan- 
neus. But it would not be correct to identify the Sad- 
ducees with the political party. With the intervention 
of the Romans, and also through the long reign of Herod, 
other groups and parties formed, all more or less involved 
in the politics of the time, and representing often non- 
Jewish ideas which would be as repugnant to the Sad- 
ducees as to the Pharisees. For, after all, the Sadducees 
were Jews, and from their own point of view most loyal 
Jews. Herod the Idumean was detested by both, and 
the Sadducees suffered from his cruelty no less than the 
Pharisees. But the separation between them in the 
reign of John Hyrkanus was the sign that the process 
had already begun, of which the end could only be the 
final ruin of the Jewish state. It was the trial of strength 
between the purely religious and the political theory of 
Jewish national life ; and, though the political catastrophe 
was complete and overwhelming, the religious vitality 
of the nation was uninjured, as its results in later centuries 
abundantly show. 

After what has been said it will not be necessary to 
describe in detail the history of the Pharisees as a separate 
party. The full story of the last two centuries of the 


46 THE PHARISEES 


Jewish state can be read best of all in Schiirer’s great 
work. But it will be well to indicate briefly the part 
which the Pharisees played in those centuries. 

When John Hyrkanus turned against them and allied 
himself with the Sadducees, he did no more, according to 
Josephus, than annul the ordinances that they had made 
for the religious conduct of life, thereby hoping to win 
the favour of the people through their release from irksome 
restrictions. But the people sided with the Pharisees, 
and hated their would-be deliverer,! and his descendants 
after him. Real persecution began with his son, Janneus 
who made no pretence of any love for the Pharisees. 
Owing to his violence, many of the leaders of the Pharisees 
fled for safety out of the country; and even Simeon ben 
Shetah, the chief of them, who was brother of the queen, 
probably owed his life only to her secret protection. . 
Jannzus might make overtures of reconciliation to the 
Pharisees, but they hated and feared him too much for 
that to be possible. Even apart from his cruel treatment 
of themselves, they could not but be offended to see a 
man such as he, a rough soldier and man of the world, 
wearing the robes and performing the duties of High 
Priest, as by hereditary right he continued to do. It 
is true that when he died they gave him a magnificent 
funeral. But this was at the entreaty of the queen, who 
had always been their friend. And it is possible to 
Imagine a certain satisfaction in giving a pompous 
funeral to a man who could now do them no more 
harm. 

If, as Josephus relates, he advised the queen Alexandra 
(Salome 2) to seek the support of the Pharisees, it was 


1 See the conclusion of the passage quoted from Josephus above, 
p. 38. 

2 The real name of the queen was Salampsio. See Derenbourg 
Essai, p. 102 ”. 2, where the different forms of her name are given, 
inno sodw mynow “et par erreur, pyybw, et en deux 
mots, })¥ Sw.” The “erreur” is the nearest approach to the 
true form of all the names in the list. The name is clearly nyo, 
a form from which all the others can easily be explained, and with- 
out which they are unintelligible. As one of Herod’s daughters 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 47 


advice which she was most willing to follow. During 
the nine years of her reign (78-69 B.c.), the Pharisees had 
the control of the government, and Simeon ben Shetah, 
her brother, was, so to speak, Prime Minister. This is 
not a contradiction of what was said above of the Phari- 
sees aS a non-political party ; for their influence during 
the reign of Alexandra was exerted mainly on the side 
of the religious life of the people, partly by strengthening 
their own position as opposed to the Sadducees, and partly 
by reintroducing the ordinances which John Hyrkanus 
had annulled and which Janneus had kept in abeyance. 
It is said in the passage from the Talmud translated 
above, that Simeon ben Shetah restored the old order ; 
and that means, among other things, that he filled the 
Sanhedrin with Pharisaic supporters, that the exclusive 
jurisdiction of the Sadducees in criminal and civil law 
was abolished, and that the Sadducean High Priests 
were compelled to follow the Pharisaic views in the per- 
formance of the ritual of the Temple. It is not distinctly 
said that this control of the Temple ritual was acquired 
by the Pharisees in the reign of queen Alexandra; but 
there does not seem to be any later period to which its 
origin can be reasonably assigned. It must be remem- 
bered that the Temple ritual, at all events at the great 
festivals, was performed in the sight of vast crowds of 
people, who, according to Josephus (Ant. xiii. 13, 5 and 
cp. b. Succah, 48) were quite ready to resent any departure 
from what they believed to be the only right way of per- 
forming the ceremonies. They looked to the Pharisees as 
their leaders and teachers, and would have the service 
performed according to the Pharisaic order. And the 


was afterwards called Salampsio, Ladayuyuw, the existence of the 
name in the Hasmonean family is probable enough. Why Deren- 
bourg should have been at the trouble to prove that Salampsio 
is practically the same as Salome, by inserting a ‘ p’ before ‘sio’ 
when he does not account for the ‘sio,’ is not apparent. Klausner, 
YIIN Ww, 1922, p. 130 and note, adopts the form yyy ovdw with- 
out hesitation. Chwolson (Das letzte Passamahl Christi, 1908, p. 14 
nm. 3) took the same view many years earlier. 


48 THE PHARISEES 


Pharisees had enjoyed, during the nine years of queen 
Alexandra’s reign, an opportunity, which they assuredly 
did not neglect, of enforcing their own ideas upon the 
priests responsible for the Temple service. It would 
be difficult, and perhaps even dangerous, for any High 
Priest to attempt a return to the older order after the 
Pharisees had once shown the people what they accepted 
as the right way.' 

After the death of queen Alexandra, the Pharisees 
never again exercised so great an influence in public 
affairs; as they never again had so devoted a iriend on 
the throne. The Sadducees regained some of their 
former power, while the Pharisees resumed their old 
attitude of distrust towards the reigning house and 
abstention from affairs of state. The quarrel between 
Hyrkanus and Aristobulus, the sons of Alexandra, ending 
in the triumph of the latter, only so far concerned them ~ 
that it marked a further departure from their ideal of 
the national life; and its most important consequence 
was the intervention of the Romans, on the appeal of 
the disputants to Pompey (63 B.c.). It is highly signi- 
ficant that, besides the two rivals, there was a third party 
who joined in the appeal, representatives of the people 
who besought the Roman general to abolish the office 
of King and restore the ancient form of government 
under the High Priest (Jos. Ant. xiv. 3, 2). 

The Pharisees are not named in this connection, but 
there can be no doubt that this last appeal was their 
work. It is entirely in keeping with their principles, 
and they were the only leaders who could possibly repre- 
sent the people at large. If Simeon ben Shetah were 
still alive he must certainly have been concerned in this 
attempt to abolish the kingship, in which case he would 
be opposing the claims of two rivals who were both his 
own nephews. Pompey did not take the bold course 
suggested to him, a course which might have saved the 

1 For the unwilling compliance of the priests with the Tequire- 


ments of the Pharisees, see the very candid etc given by 
a priest to his son, T. Joma, i. 8. 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 49 


Romans a vast amount of trouble in later years. The 
quarrel was not settled, for Aristobulus was by no means 
inclined to submit to the authority of Pompey, and his 
rashness led to the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans 
after a three months’ siege. The reign of Aristobulus 
was ended, but much more was ended by the intervention 
of Pompey. While he restored, at the petition of the 
people, the High Priesthood of Hyrkanus, he gave him 
no supreme power. The holder of the highest place 
among the Jews, whether he were the High Priest or the 
titular king, was henceforth a vassal of Rome, willing 
or unwilling. Even Herod, the ablest of all who mounted 
the Jewish throne in the last years of its existence, only 
held his position by favour of the Roman power. The 
independence of the Jewish state, which had lasted nearly 
a century, was gone for ever; and even the Pharisees, 
who would feel the least regret at that loss, could hardly 
fail to observe that they had not got the form of govern- 
ment for which they had hoped, and that bad as the rule 
of the Hasmoneans had become, that of Herod was worse, 
and behind all was the possibility of far greater ills in the 
oncoming might of Rome. 

The reign of Herod (37-4 B.c.), though of the greatest 
importance in the general history of the Jewish people, 
offers but little which specially concerns the Pharisees. 
Herod would have been quite capable of repeating the 
attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes to replace Judaism by 
Hellenism ; for he was no Jew, and all his inclination 
was towards the ways of the Roman world and its Greek 
culture. But he was not disposed to provoke another 
Maccabean Revolt, and he could see that the materials 
for it lay ready to hand in the power of the Pharisees 
over the mass of the people. He avoided an open defiance 
of the Pharisees, and even made a considerable show of 
deference to their views in such matters as the rebuilding 
of the Temple, which was done by priests only, in the 
avoidance of placing his own image on the coins and the 
like. Moreover, he showed favour to the leaders of 
the Pharisees, whose names are given by Josephus 

a 


50 THE PHARISEES 


(Ant. xv. I0. 4) as Pollio and Sameas, the Abtalion and 
Shemaiah (or possibly Shammai?‘) of the Mishnah. 

For their sake, apparently, he refrained from punishing 
the Pharisees who refused to take the oath of fidelity 
to himself, which he required of them. But these marks 
of deference could not lessen the intense hatred and loathing 
felt towards Herod by the Pharisees and their supporters 
among the people. They, too, remembered what had 
made their fathers rise up against Antiochus, and only 
the fear of the heavy hand of Herod restrained them from 
doing the same. In the last days of the king, when his 
death, eagerly awaited, was known to be near, two men 2 
whom Josephus (Ant. xvii. 6. 2) describes as two of the 
most eloquent men among the Jews, most celebrated 
interpreters of the Torah and men well beloved among the 
people, led a sedition directed to pulling down the build- 
ings which Herod had erected contrary to the law of their — 
fathers. The attempt failed, and the two leaders were 
burnt alive. This incident is significant, not only as 
an indication of the popular feeling towards Herod, but 
as marking the appearance of what afterwards became 
the party of the Zealots. 

Hitherto it has been possible to regard the Pharisees 
and the Sadducees as the two main groups opposed to 
each other, the former having the support of the common 
people as a whole, the latter associating themselves with 
the ruling powers. The reign of Herod introduced com- 
plications unknown before, if only because he himself was 
not a Jew and those who supported him, whether Jews 
or not, had no direct concern with Judaism as such. 
Probably many, perhaps most, of those who called them- 
selves Herodians were not Jews at all. | 


1 For the identification of the names, see my Pirké Aboth, on i 


TL /Iomaii: 

2 The two men, Judah son of Sariphzeus, and Matthias son of 
Margaluth, are not known in the Rabbinic tradition. In Wars. i. 33. 2, 
the former is called ‘‘ son of Sepphorezus,” which no doubt means 
that he was a native of Sepphoris. It is remarkable that the Meg. 
Taanith, which notes the day of Herod’s death, says nothing about 
the two fanatics. 


HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF PHARISAISM 51 


But the Pharisees can no longer be treated as a strictly 
homogeneous party. The cruelties of Herod and his 
open disregard, in spite of occasional lip service, for the 
Torah and the religion founded on it, caused many of its 
defenders to question whether the peace policy, which the 
Pharisees had always pursued, could or ought to be main- 
tained. The main body of the Pharisees remained firmly 
attached to that policy, even down to the last war. But 
alongside of the Pharisees, from the time of Herod onwards, 
two other parties come into view, each representing an 
extreme position as compared with the moderation of the 
Pharisees. On the one hand, the Essenes solved the 
practical problem of living under the Torah by withdrawal 
from the world and forming a community of their own. 
They practised an asceticism which was never adopted or 
even approved by the Pharisees, but which, after all, was 
only the logical development of Pharisaism. The Essenes 
are, so far as I know, not named in the Rabbinical litera- 
ture and, as a community, had little or no direct influence 
upon the development of Pharisaism, But it is quite 
probable that individual Pharisees owed a good deal to 
their teaching and example. When the Talmud speaks 
of the ‘Early Hasidim,’ osws7m oonn it describes 
persons who seem to have had something of the Essene 
about them. 

Of far greater direct importance were the Zealots. 
They were in full accord with the Pharisees in their devo- 
tion to Torah, but they could no longer be ‘satisfied to 
defend it by merely peaceful means. Cruelty and oppres- 
sion awakened the desire to rebel, and rebellion meant the 
defence of. Torah against those who flouted it. In the 
- early days of the movement there was probably no clearly 
marked division between the Zealots and the Pharisees, 
and it is significant that the two men who preached 
‘sedition in the last days of Herod were said to have been 
known and admired as teachers. But later, when the. 


1 But see Biichler, Some Types of Jewish Palestinian Piety, 1922, 
where the distinction between the Hasidim and the Essenes is 
clearly drawn, and abundantly illustrated. 


52 THE PHARISEES 


war against Rome broke out, which ended with the fall 
of Jerusalem, the Zealots were wild fanatics with whom 
the Pharisees had little, if anything, in common. And 
again, in the War of Bar Cocheba, the Pharisees as a whole 
stood aloof, the most notable exception being R. Akiba. 
The Zealots, like other revolutionaries, started a movement 
which passed out of their control; and what had begun 
as an attempt to realise certain ends in accordance with 
a definite policy became a mere orgy of fanatical passion. 

The Zealots remained, the wild men of the Pharisees, 
down to the last war; and while the Pharisees continued 
to hold their ascendancy over the people, and steadily 
maintained their peace policy as long as they could, yet 
their authority was diminished, and in the two great 
periods of war was reduced almost to nothing. The 
history of the Pharisees, therefore, from the time of 
Herod, must describe them as being much less prominent 
in the national affairs than they had been. Powerful 
they always were; but in this period they were obliged 
to contend against increasing difficulties, and when the 
storm broke, they could only wait till it had spent its 
fury and save what they could out of the wreck. 

It is therefore needless to attempt to describe in detail 
the history of the Pharisees down to the defeat of Bar 
Cocheba. The story is to be found in the history books, 
and the Pharisees are only one element, and that by no 
means the most conspicuous, in the confusion and tumult 
which was crushed into stillness by the heavy hand of 
Rome. | | 

When the storm died away, the Pharisees alone sur- 
vived. The Sadducees, as a body, disappeared when the 
Temple fell. The Zealots ended their career when Bar 
Cocheba was captured in Bethar. The Pharisees were 
the only guides and teachers who had a word for the 
people ; and they, and none others, saved from the ruin 
of the Jewish nation all that could be saved, and spoke 
to the stricken hearts of their countrymen the words of 
comfort and hope. The Judaism which has come down 
through the centuries is essentially Pharisaism. 


CHAPTER III 
TORAH AND TRADITION 


In the previous chapter I have traced the history of the 
Pharisees, as an element in the Jewish people, from their 
origin down to the time when they were left the sole 
survivors after the War of Bar Cocheba. It was impossible 
to avoid some reference to their distinctive principles, 
and more especially their attitude towards the Torah, 
because there was no other means of identifying them 
in the period before the name Pharisee came into use. 
In the present chapter I shall deal at length with the 
fundamental principles upon which their whole conception 
of religion and life was founded, and by reason of which 
they were distinguished from Sadducees, Essenes, Am-ha- 
- aretz, and whatever other types of Judaism may have 
borne a special name. 

The key to the understanding of the ground principles 
of Pharisaism is found in the two words which stand as 
the title of this chapter, Torah and Tradition. It is, of 
course, true that there was Torah long before there were 
Pharisees, that Torah was recognised as the supreme 
authority by the Sadducees no less than by the Pharisees, 
and that Tradition did not begin with Ezra and the 
Sopherim. But Torah and Tradition meant more to 
the Pharisees than to the Sadducees; and not only so, 
but it was the peculiar combination of Torah with Tradi- 
tion, effected by the Pharisees, which especially called 
forth the opposition of the Sadducees, which indeed gave 
to the Judaism of the Pharisees the distinctive character 
that it has retained down to the present day. To the 

53 


54 THE PHARISEES 


examination, therefore, of these two fundamental con- 
ceptions I now proceed. 

Torah means Teaching: it does not mean Law. Unless 
that elementary fact be clearly grasped and constantly 
borne in mind, there is no possibility of understanding 
Pharisaism. There were reasons, no doubt, why the 
LXX always rendered mmm by vopuos, as there were 
reasons. why Paul, who ought to have known better, 
perpetuated the same mischievous error. But the fact 
remains that the word Law does not and cannot represent 
what the Jews in general and the Pharisees in particular 
meant by Torah; and for this reason the word Torah is 
left untranslated throughout this book as a technical 
term having its own special meaning. 

Torah is, of course, in itself a common Hebrew word, 
and denotes teaching—any kind of teaching given by one > 
person to another.. But long before the time of Ezra 
the word acquired also a religious meaning, and denoted 
teaching given by or on behalf of Yahveh, the communica- 
tion of his will or of whatever else he would make known 
to his people. This usage can be traced in the Old Testa- 
ment as early as the date of the composite document 
JE, i.e. approximately 750 B.c., and in fact was probably 
much older. In Exodus xviii. 20, which is assigned to 
JE, it is said: “‘ And thou (Moses) shalt make clear 
to them the statutes and the ‘ toroth,’ and make known 
to them the way wherein they should walk and the thing 
which they should do.’’ The evidence of the Pentateuch 
is confirmed by the independent witness of Amos and 
Hosea. In Amos ii. 4 it is said: ‘‘ Because they have 
rejected the ‘torah’ of Yahveh, and have not kept his 
statutes.’ Hosea iv. 6: ‘‘ Because thou hast rejected 
knowledge, I will also reject thee, so that thou be no 
priest to me; and thou hast forgotten the ‘torah’ of 
thy God, I also will forget thee and thy sons.” 
Hosea viii. 1: “‘ They have transgressed my covenant and 
trespassed against my ‘torah.’’”’ Hosea viii. 12: “‘ Though 
I should write for him myriads of my ‘torah,’ they are 

t See Lauterbach, Sadducees and Pharisees, p. 186 and note. 


TORAH AND TRADITION 55 


counted as a strange thing.’”’ These passages show that 
the close connection of Torah with religion was familiar 
both to prophets and their hearers as early as the eighth 
century ; and not only that but also such characteristic 
ideas as “‘ walking in his ways,’ and the association 
of ‘ torah’ with statutes. These ideas became much more 
prominent in later times, but they were no invention of 
Ezra. They are found more abundantly in the Priestly 
Code and the allied portions of the Pentateuch, as may 
be seen in any Concordance or even by a glance at the 
pages of the Pentateuch ; and, whatever part Ezra may 
have taken in publishing the collected Torah, he was 
certainly not the author of it. What he did was to pro- 
claim in the hearing of the people the full and complete 
Torah, the teaching which Yahveh had given through 
Moses for the guidance and instruction of Israel. The 
association of Torah with Moses may well have come 
down from the time of Moses himself, though it will be 
observed that he is not named in the passages cited above 
from the two prophets. After the time of Ezra, the asso- 
ciation of Torah with Moses was a matter of course, and 
the name was applied to the five books forming the 
Pentateuch. Strictly speaking, the Torah of Moses meant 
the teaching given by and through Moses and contained 
in those five books. Ezra, of course, knew nothing of 
the modern theory which unfolds the gradual growth of 
the Pentateuch; but if he had known how it was the 
outcome of the labours of many generations of prophets 
and priests, embodying ancient traditions and later ordi- 
nances, he would only have said that all these did 
but develop the original teaching which Moses had given. 
The critical theory of the Pentateuch almost necessarily 
implies such a view on the part of those who accepted 
Deuteronomy in addition to the older Code, and those 
later who accepted the Priestly Code and finally the entire 
Pentateuch as the Torah of Moses. They did not feel 
that they were asked to accept something entirely new, 
although they had not heard it or read it before. It was 
but the fuller and more explicit presentation of what had 


56 THE PHARISEES 


been known to their fathers from time immemorial. 
If they had thought that they were bidden to make a 
complete breach with their past they would never have 
accepted either Deuteronomy or the Priestly Code, and 
Ezra would have been the last man to lead them away 
from Moses. 

The conception of the ‘‘ Torah of Moses ’”’ was accord- 
ingly of unknown antiquity in the time of Ezra, and he 
only made known the full and complete written record 
of it. Full and complete, that is, as a written record 
embodying all that was in his time regarded as being 
Torah of Moses.t Moreover, even if it were established 
that the book which Ezra proclaimed was only the Priestly 
Code, without the earlier portions of the Pentateuch, the 
reform of religion which placed the Torah in the position 
of supreme authority was based on the Pentateuch sub- 
stantially complete, including all those earlier portions. 
If Ezra had confined himself merely to the Priestly Code, 
the results which actually did follow from his labours 
would not necessarily have followed, perhaps would not 
even probably have followed. It has often been held 
that Ezra’s chief aim was to establish and strengthen the 
priestly system, which centred in the Temple and became 
articulate in the ceremonial law. Of course, it would 
be foolish to deny that his activity as a reformer was 
much concerned with the Temple and its services, as 
the visible embodiment of the nation’s worship, or that 
his sympathies were entirely with an administration on 
priestly lines. But, judging from the results of his work, 
it seems to me clear that his real aims were more inclusive 
and far-reaching, and that what he set himself to do was 
to make the Torah of Moses the dominating factor in the 
national life to a degree and in a manner till then un- 
known. The Torah was to become the supreme authority 


> 


t It is, of course, true that additions were made after the time 
of Ezra; but my present argument does not turn on the question 
whether the Pentateuch as Ezra proclaimed it was actually the 
Pentateuch as we have it now. Substantially it was; and in any 
case he dealt with what was to him the whole Torah of Moses. 


TORAH AND TRADITION 57 


of the nation, the guide of its actions, the source of its 
knowledge of the divine will; and this, not only for 
the community as a whole but for each individual member 
of that community. The people were to become the 
People of the Torah, so that their whole life in its every 
detail would bear more or less clear witness to the influ- 
ence of Torah and their acceptance of its teaching. 

If this were what Ezra consciously aimed at (and it 
is certainly the result which eventually followed), then 
it ts obvious that success was more easy to reach in some 
directions than in others. To elaborate the Temple 
services, to exalt the priestly organisation and enforce the 
laws of ceremonial purity was the easiest part of his task, 
as well as the most conspicuous, the most readily observed. 
It is this, accordingly, which has been most usually noticed 
and described, as if it were the chief or even the only 
object of Ezra’s reforming zeal. If it had been, then 
the other results which did follow would not have fol- 
lowed, simply because there was no reason why they 
should follow. There was nothing in a mere elaboration 
of a sacerdotal system to make them follow. But if, on 
the other hand, Ezra made it his supreme object to con- 
stitute the Torah the governing factor in the whole national 
life, then those other results would naturally follow, as, 
in fact, they did; and the elaboration of the Temple 
ritual, etc. was only one of those results. Certainly 
the Torah contained a great number of laws bearing upon 
the ritual and the priesthood and kindred matters, and 
_ Ezra laid the greatest stress upon the most scrupulously 
exact observance of these. But their real and only claim 
to observance at all was that they were enjoined in the 
Torah; and apart from that fact he would have had 
no special reason for setting up an elaborate hierarchy. 
In what he did as touching the Temple services he was 
applying his general principle to the object which lay 
nearest to hand, by no means to the only object within 
his view. For the Torah was not the concern of the 
priests alone, either to observe or to administer ; it was 
not even for the whole community as such. It was for 


58 THE PHARISEES 


each individual Jew, being a member of the community, 
to take its teaching to heart as it might concern him, and 
each one must learn that he was responsible for obedience 
to the Torah in his own case. Ezra was but following 
the lead of Ezekiel in thus individualising religion, and 
he was enabled to enforce the lesson at the time when it 
was most needed. To live for the Torah, by the Torah 
and with the Torah was the ideal which Ezra cherished 
for the national life; that was what the Jew must strive 
for, work for, and to that he must give the devotion of 
his whole life—a devotion without qualification or 
reserve, a whole-hearted allegiance to the will of God 
set forth in the Torah. I cannot, indeed, directly prove 
that these ideas were in the mind of Ezra, still less can 
I quote reputed words of his which express them; but 
there is no question that a great movement did begin about 
a century after the return from the Exile, a movement 
whose significance and intention are truly described in 
such terms as I have used. There must have been a 
great personality to start such a movement; and since 
Ezra was there, and was in later times! regarded as the 
man who re-founded the religion of Israel and who actually 
founded Judaism, we cannot be far wrong in ascribing 
to him the more or less conscious possession of the idea 
which inspired the whole. 

We have, then, as the outstanding result of Ezra’s 
work, the establishment of the Torah of Moses as the 


t For Ezra as the restorer of the Torah, see b. Succ. 20%. This 
is the Talmudic way of saying that he was the founder of the 
Judaism specifically based on Torah. In j. Meg. 75*, and more fully 
in b. B.K. 82”, a list is given of ten ordinances made by Ezra, 
Whether these were really due to him is open to question; but 
they show what the later teachers regarded as attributable to him, 
and it is noteworthy that not a single one of them has any reference 
to the Temple ritual. Some of them are quite trivial; the two 
most important being that the Torah should be read in the villages 
on the second and fifth day of each week, in addition to the Sabbath, 
and that the local tribunal, Beth Din, should also sit on those same 
two week-days. All the ordinances were concerned with the daily 
life of the members of the community. 


TORAH AND TRADITION 59 


dominating factor in the life of the Jewish people. He 
laid, as it were, one of the foundation stones upon which 
the structure of al] subsequent Judaism was built, and 
that foundation stone has never been removed or under- 
mined from the time of Ezra to the present day. It was 
shown in the previous chapter that the divergence of 
the Pharisees from the Sadducees was due to a difference 
in their respective estimate of the true nature and signi- 
ficance of the Torah, the former finding in it a far greater 
and loftier meaning than the latter would admit. I do 
not know of any evidence to show what Ezra himself 
thought, or whether the diverging lines were already 
recognised in his time. It would certainly be rash and 
unwarranted to ascribe to him such a view of the meaning 
of Torah as was afterwards held by the Pharisees, and I 
think it probable that such ideas never came within the 
range of his thought. At all events, I shall not assume 
that he had any knowledge of them. It is sufficient 
that he left as his great legacy to his people the Torah 
as their supreme authority and the interpretation of it 
their greatest need. The need arose from the fact that 
the guidance to be found in the Torah could only be 
made effective if it could be brought to bear upon problems 
not expressly dealt with in its written words. For the 
Torah was instruction, intended to be learned and, where 
action was called for, to be obeyed. The whole point 
would be missed, the whole effect would be lost unless 
there were, on the part of those who, by their representa- 
tives, had pledged themselves to accept the Torah and 
abide by it (Neh. x. 29), a practical response and not 
a merely theoretical aquiescence. This is fundamental 
for Judaism, not merely in the times of Ezra and the 
Sopherim but in all subsequent periods of Jewish history. 

It was therefore the task of the Sopherim to teach 
and interpret the Torah, applying that teaching as occa- 
sion might require by such simple interpretation as would 
meet the case. More than this, it is not safe to assume: 
less than this there could hardly be if there were to be 
any teaching at all. Merely to teach the written word 


60 THE PHARISEES 


without explanation would obviously be useless when 
the case to be decided was not expressly mentioned in 
the written text. If we ask the question, What principle 
guided the Sopherim in giving the required interpretation 
in such a case? there is no first-hand evidence on which 
to base the answer. But it seems natural to suppose 
that they would consider what was the existing practice, 
if any such existed, and what, according to their own judg- 
ment, seemed to be the right course to follow, the right 
teaching to give. Some innovation, some addition of 
what was new, in form if not in substance, there must 
necessarily have been. But it must not be forgotten 
that the Sopherim had the past behind them, and though 
they were shaping the future they did so only out of their 
sense of what that past required. Ezra was a great 
innovator, and the Sopherim who carried on his work 
were laying down lines of progress which were to stretch 
far down the centuries; but neither he nor they were 
making a completely new beginning, nor ever supposed 
that’ they were. If they started a tradition they also 
inherited a tradition, and the one helped to determine 
the form and the contents of the other. The importance 
of this will be seen more clearly when we come to the 
fully developed Pharisaic conception of Torah. | : 
The process of applying the teaching contained in the 
Torah involved of necessity the statement of precepts 
not explicitly taught before, directions for religious action 
not expressly contained in the written text of the Torah. 
The question could not and did not fail to arise, sooner 
or later, By what authority those new precepts were 
enjoined ? What was their rightful claim to obedience 
and acceptance ? What was their relation to the written 
text of the Torah, whose authority was undisputed ? 
The raising of that question was the beginning of the 
divergence between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, 
and it would be very interesting if we could point to the 
exact date at which it was first raised or name the man 
who raised it. But we can get no further than the fact 
that it was raised, at some point of time between Ezra 


TORAH AND TRADITION * 61 


and the breach between the Pharisees and the Sad- 
ducees. The question was answered in two ways. It 
was held by one party or school of thought that the 
Torah was the written text alone of the Pentateuch, 
containing such-and-such precise statements, so many 
definite precepts and no more; and that the pledge of 
obedience taken by the representatives of the people 
committed them only to the observance of what was in 
so many words enjoined in the written Torah. When 
directions were needed, in regard to cases not expressly 
provided for in the written Torah, it was the right and 
duty of the priests, as the guardians and teachers of 
Torah from ancient times, to make such ordinances as 
they judged necessary and adequate. These ordinances, 
Gezéroth, mw,? were not part of the Torah, and did 
not claim to be; they were the injunctions of a purely 
human authority, whose members acted, no doubt, in 
accordance with the divine will, and exercised a privilege 
expressly conferred upon them in the Torah itself 
(Deut. xvii. 9-11). ‘‘ And thou shalt come to the priests 
and Levites and the judge which shall be in those 
days, and thou shalt inquire, and they shall declare to 
thee the word of judgment. And thou shalt do according 
to the word which they shall declare to thee from that 
place which Yahveh shall choose, and thou shalt observe 
to do according to all which they shall teach thee. Accord- 
ing to the Torah which they shall teach thee, and the 
judgment which they shall say to thee thou shalt do; 
thou shalt not turn aside from the word which they shall 
declare to thee to the right hand or to the left.” 

Lauterbach has pointed out (Sadducees and Pharisees, 
p. 185) that this means that the priests gave to the inquirer 
their own opinion and not what was set down in the 
Torah, because that was already provided for. Whether 
or not this was the intention of the authors of Deuteronomy 
may be left an open question; but it was certainly the 
construction put upon the passage by the priests and 

t On the Gezeroth, see Lauterbach, Sadducees and Pharisees, 
p- 186 and note ibid. 


62° THE PHARISEES 


rulers who administered the Torah after Ezra had made 
it supreme. They claimed the right to direct the people 
what they should do, and not merely to recite the words 
of the Torah to them, but to make ordinances which 
were not Torah. This must have been the line taken 
in regard to Torah from the earliest times after Ezra, 
simply because there was then no reason to take any 
other line; the priests were there, the Torah gave them 
authority to direct the people, and they used that 
authority.? 

But in course of time the consequence of this policy 
began to appear, and gradually suggested another answer 
to the question as to the authority of the ‘ ordinances.’ 
When every fresh case where guidance was needed and 
where no explicit direction was given in the Torah was 
dealt with by an ordinance, there was a gradual but in- 
evitable tendency for the Torah to become obsolete, 
even in time a mere archaic relic, having no longer any 
relation to the life and thought of the later age. The 
ancient words were there, ana were still binding, because 
these were what the people had pledged themselves to 
obey; but the occasions on which they could be prac- 
tically observed became fewer and fewer as the number 
of ‘ordinances’ became greater and greater. Accord- 
ingly, an opposite view began to be held and advocated. 
The ‘ ordinances,’ if they were to be admitted as binding 
the people, could only do so if what they enjoined was 
itself Torah or in harmony with Torah. The people 
had pledged themselves to obey the Torah and not any- 
thing outside it. Therefore all the religious duty of 
the people must have the sanction of Torah and not 
merely the legislative authority of priests and rulers. 
To ascertain whether that sanction was really given was 
a matter of interpretation; and the answer was to be 
found by all who could rightly interpret the Torah, not 
merely by the bare authority of the priests. Moreover, 

t It should be remembered that most of the early Sopherim were 


priests, as Ezra himself had been. There were probably some 
Levites, but not at first any laymen, 


TORAH AND TRADITION 63 


the Torah had been given to all Israel, and not to the 
priests alone. If, therefore, there were those who not 
being priests were yet competent to interpret Torah, 
then they had an inherent right to do so. And they 
exercised that right by establishing the sanction of Torah 
for what had previously been merely ordained by the 
independent authority of the priests. The means by 
which they did this is indicated by the one word, Tradition. 

It has been pointed out above that the ‘ ordinances’ 
of the priests were to some extent based on existing 
custom, and the effect of an ‘ordinance’ would be to 
give validity and binding force to some practice which 
was either already customary or generally in accordance 
with custom. It is scarcely probable that the priests 
would introduce and enjoin a practice entirely unknown 
till then, and having no relation to previous practice. 
Now those who took the second line, in regard to the 
binding authority of the ordinances, maintained that 
what was enjoined by the ordinances was right to be 
done only if or because it had the sanction of Torah behind 
it. They did not dispute that action so enjoined was a 
religious duty. They were as insistent as the priests 
in requiring the performance of such actions. But they 
held that since these actions were based on tradition, the 
tradition which made them valid was a tradition of the 
interpretation of Torah, that there had been handed down 
along with the written Torah an unwritten explanation 
of it which gave as its result the precepts embodied in 
the ordinances. The holders of this view therefore intro- 
duced the conception of the unwritten Torah, np .byaw smn 
alongside of and supplementary to the written Torah, 
an>aw mann or rather they enlarged the whole con- 
ception of Torah so as to include both the written and 


the unwritten, the Text and the Tradition. The Sad- 


, ducees adhered to the written text alone and rejected 


- 


‘the unwritten, traditional Torah. Those who opposed 


them and maintained the Torah written and unwritten, 
the Torah interpreted by Tradition, were the Pharisees ; 
and this conception of Torah is fundamental in the whole 


64 THE PHARISEES 


of their religious thought and practice, and the literature 
which expresses their ideas. This is the real point of 
cleavage between Sadducees and Pharisees; the differ- 
ences usually mentioned and taken from Josephus (chiefly, 
Wars. ii. 8, 14) are of secondary importance only, inci- - 
dental results partly of their main theory and partly 
of their social and political position. Josephus himself 
(Ant. xiii, 10, 6) gives the true ground of difference 
without apparently realising its importance. 

At what precise date this enlarged conception of Torah 
began to be present to the minds of some of its inter- 
preters there is no evidence to show. But, as it is funda- 
mental in Pharisaism, and as the Pharisees broke with 
the Sadducees in the reign of John Hyrkanus, and as the 
Sadducean view is the one which would naturally be held 
at the beginning, when the written Torah was still able 
to meet the demands made on it, we are warranted in 
placing the first appearance of the enlarged conception 
of Torah in the long interval between Ezra and Hyrkanus, 
but at what precise date we cannot tell. There is no 
certain trace of it in the Chronicler, though he makes 
frequent reference to the Torah of Moses, and to the 
duty of observing what is written therein. The Chronicler, 
however, was, if not a priest himself (and he may quite 
well have been), entirely devoted to the priestly con- 
ception of religion, and would not be likely to mention or 
countenance a view of Torah so directly in conflict with 
that of the Priests. Sirach also does not mention it, 
though he does refer to the Torah. But it is quite pos- 
sible that he knew about it and did not approve of it; 
and this may be the reason why he left Ezra without a 
word in his enumeration of famous men (Ecclus. xlix. 
12, 13). For, whether or not Ezra himself originated 
this view of Torah, the Pharisees who maintained it 
took Ezra, so to speak, as their patron saint. Yet there 
is clear evidence, even in the Old Testament, of their 
new view of Torah, the specifically Pharisaic conception 
of its true significance. Psalm xix and Psalm cxix are 
entirely without meaning unless read in the light of this 


TORAH AND TRADITION 65 


Pharisaic conception of Torah. Psalm xix may, perhaps, 
be taken as the first literary proclamation of it, called 
forth as a protest against the older and narrower con- 
ception, and as a vehement assertion of the new. The two 
halves of that Psalm are often thought to have no con- 
nection with each other, and the Revisers have so far 
yielded to this view as to leave a space between the one 
portion and the other. But the connection is really 
extremely close. The whole point of the author of the 
Psalm is that what the sun is in the heavens the Torah 
is in the soul. And for him, the Torah is no longer the 
mere written text of an ancient book, becoming year by 
year more archaic and useless, but a living word from — 
God, a revelation not confined to the written text, an 
inexhaustible treasure of divine teaching. That is why 
he bursts out, in triumphant assertion: ‘“‘ The Torah of 
the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul,”’ etc., and follows 
it up with a series of declarations in terms which became 
the familiar watchwords of the religion of Torah as the 
Pharisees held it. 

Similarly, Psalm cxix is one long joyous hymn of 
praise, in glorification of Torah and of God who gave it. 
And, if anyone desires to know what a Pharisee meant 
by Torah, and even more, what Torah meant to a Pharisee, 
let him study this Psalm, in its length and breadth and 
depth and height. The somewhat artificial form is a 
mere detail; if the author chose that form for his hymn, 
that was his own affair. What matters is the rapture which 
he could, and most certainly did, express under the con- 
ditions of style which he imposed on himself. Whether 
this Psalm were written before the rupture between 
Sadducees and Pharisees took place cannot be determined ; 
but the presence in the mind of the Pharisees of such 
ideas as are found in Psalm xix and Psalm cxix would fully 
account for their opposition to the views of the Sadducees. 

For the Pharisaic view, their enlarged conception of 
Torah, was of the utmost importance, and had the most 
powerful influence upon the subsequent development of 
Judaism. In a single sentence the effect was this: To 

5 


eee 


66 THE PHARISEES 


break the fetters which were cramping the religious life 
of the people, and to set its spirit free to receive fresh 
inspiration from God. As shown above, the old Sadducean 
view tended to make the Torah an archaic relic, a sacred 
text venerable indeed from its age, but whose teaching 
had an ever-decreasing relation to the religious needs of 
the time, and even whose very meaning became, with 
every generation, less intelligible. If this process had 
gone on unchecked, the Jewish religion would have become 
a mere ceremonial performance, a dead ritual with no 
breath of divine life in it, nothing to help the worshipper 
to realise his communion with the living God or even to 
suppose that such a communion was still possible. It 
was from this danger that the religious life of the Jewish 
people was saved; and it was saved by the exaltation 
of the Torah from being a closed revelation to an open 
one, from a dead letter to a letter made alive again, from 
a text long ago set and hardened, whose meaning could 


, never change and which could say nothing new, to a text 


whose meaning was plastic because freshly interpreted 
in the light of the growing moral discernment of religious 
teachers, age after age. This is the real significance of 
the unwritten Torah, and of its introduction beside the 
written text. In form it was an appeal to tradition ; 
in effect it was a declaration that what God intended to 
teach his people was something greater and higher and 
holier than the mere written word by itself would indicate.. 
Of course the Sadducees were right, from the point of 
view of grammar and exegesis, in saying that the words 
of the text did not mean what the Pharisees said they _ 
meant; and from their own standpoint they were justified 
in rejecting the Pharisaic interpretation, those traditions 
which the Pharisees placed beside or above the written 
word. But it is no less certain that the Pharisees were 
right and the Sadducees were wrong, the one in insisting 
on the need for a living revelation and the others in blindly 
opposing it. ; 

A modern student will ask the aueanael Why did the 
Pharisees not openly say that they discarded the mere 


TORAH AND TRADITION 67 


letter and that they put in place of it the higher teaching 
which their own spiritual and moral discernment approved ? 
This is a very delicate and searching question, and I 
answer it with some hesitation. I may be wrong, and 
I only give what seems to me to be the true answer. I 
believe that the Pharisees, that is the accredited teachers 
among them, in effect really did discard the mere letter 
and put in place of it the higher teaching which their 
own spiritual and moral discernment approved ; but that 
they, perhaps necessarily, conceived of this process under 
the form of an interpretation of the written word. They 
used the vehicle of Tradition in all good faith, as a means 
by which to give the interpretation they desired, not 
because in every case they definitely knew that there 
was an explicit tradition to the effect that such and such 
was the real meaning of a particular text or precept, 
but because in this way, and apparently in this way alone, 
they could bring their new teaching within the scope of 
Torah, under the ezgis of its divine authority. Whatever 
is possible now, it certainly was not possible then, to 
throw over the Torah and put any other teaching in its 
place. No Pharisee would have dreamed of any such 
thing ; and when Jesus did precisely this, in his later if 
not in his earlier teaching, the inevitable result was his 
rejection by the Pharisees and the general body of the 
people who sided with them. In the early days of the 
Pharisees there could be and there was no idea of super- 
seding the Torah ; and what they did was to take the only 
means then open to them of providing for the religious 
wants of the people, the continuance of their divine 
guidance, the refreshing of the dry courses of their soul’s 
life by the constantrenewal of communion with God. They 
worked, in their time, with such ideas and instruments 
as their time afforded; and no one who knows their 
work and can read their minds will deny that the blessing 
of God was upon them and upon those to whom, century 
after century, they have made known the Torah, the 
divine teaching entrusted to their care. 

The exaltation of Torah indicated above is the great 


68 THE PHARISEES 


achievement of the Pharisees, their chief contribution 
to the religious ideas of the human race. Whether the 
human race has paid much attention to it, or even been 
_ aware of its existence, is another matter. But it was by 
means of this exalted conception of Torah that the Jewish 
religion was saved from decay and extinction in the days 
of the Sadducees; and it was this same conception of 
Torah which enabled the Jewish people to endure through 
the centuries of persecution and the world’s ill-will down 
to the present day, enabled them to do for the human 
race great and substantial services, seldom recognised 
indeed, but of which the want would have been felt in 
all the higher regions of thought. The divine Torah, 
so conceived, is the watchword of all the later Judaism 
which found expression in the Talmud and the Midrash 
and the Jewish literature generally ; and when the non- 
Jewish student comes across some passage in the Rabbinical 
_ writings in which Torah is apostrophised in what seem 
to him extravagant terms, and holds it up to ridicule, 
he is only exposing his own failure to understand. For 
no superlative of word or of idea can be too great for 
what is regarded as the supreme gift of God to man, his 
inexhaustible revelation of divine truth, the unfading 
radiance of the heavenly light shining in the souls of 
mortal men. 

It was to this great spiritual conception that the Phari- 
sees made their way. This was what they got to when, 
in protest against the narrow literalism of the Sadducees, 
they introduced the unwritten interpretation beside 
the written text—combined Torah with Tradition. And 
for the right understanding of Pharisaism, it is necessary 
to bear constantly in mind that the inspiration of the 
whole is this supreme conception of Torah. It is this 
which combines in one consistent whole its numberless 
minute details, often in themselves apparently trivial, 
sometimes actually trivial, but which, though trivial, 


: For a fuller development of this thought see my essay on 
‘‘What the World owes to the Pharisees,” the second Arthur 
Davis Lecture, 1919. 


TORAH AND TRADITION 69 


would not have been there at all unless there had been 
the compelling force of a great principle beneath them. 
A river will carry on its surface sticks and straws and 
the refuse from its banks ; but it is the river which matters, 
and without it the trifles it carries down would never > 
have been noticed. The bearing of which remark is this, - 
that the Pharisaic theory of Torah, of which the supreme 
development has been indicated above, involved conse- 
quences of thought and act which have given to Judaism 
a peculiar character shared by no other religion, and , 
which have drawn down upon the Jews the hostile or | 
scornful comment of their Gentile neighbours through 
twenty centuries. I go on to discuss the practical develop- 
ment of Torah in the hands of the Pharisees, and their 
application of it to the problems of religious life. 

I take up the subject at the point where the Pharisees 
began to put in practice their new principle of interpreting 
Torah by the help of Tradition, the principle of the un- 
written Torah. Their object in interpreting the Torah 
at all was essentially practical, viz. to make the divine 
teaching given to Israel such that Israel could assimilate 
it. Those to whom it was given must be able to under- 
stand the meaning of what was taught them; if it were 
precept, they must know what was enjoined on them, 
and what they must do in order to fulfil the precept ; if 
it was instruction about God and his ways, they must 
be able to comprehend what was told them; if it was 
- ethical counsel, they must be able to apply the Jesson 

to themselves and acknowledge the rightness of it; if 
it was the illustration of human nature as shown in the 
lives of men of old recorded in the Scriptures, they must 
be in a position to compare such teaching with their own 
experience. The Torah, as teaching, included all these 
different types of lesson; and the task of the interpreter 
was to draw forth all these from the Torah as written. 
This theory of interpretation began with the Pharisees, 
and it has continued down to the present day. The aim 
of the teachers in any given age has been to give to those 
whom they taught what the Torah had to teach to the 


70 THE PHARISEES 


people of that age, so far as the teachers were able to 
discern it, by their own insight aided, and indeed strongly 
influenced, by the gathered treasure of experience and 
wisdom handed down from earlier times. 

In the beginning, the interpretation of Torah was a 
simple matter. It was called Midrash Torah, 771" wrt 
an ancient name still found and used in much later times.! 
This is the generic term which covers all interpretation 
of Torah, for whatever purpose. In common usage it 
is shortened to Midrash, to denote the homiletic exposi- 
tion either of Scripture in general or Torah in particular. 
The collections of such expositions, formed in the early 
centuries of the common era and containing material 
some of which goes back to the Sopherim, are called 
Midrashim, with various distinctive epithets, e.g. Midrash 
Rabbah, Midrash Tanhuma and others. The form of 
exposition common to all these is that the text to be 
interpreted is given along with the interpretation, the 
teaching derived from it, or based upon it, or associated 
with it. This is known as the Midrash form, to distinguish 
it from the Mishnah form in which the result of interpre- 
tation is given without the text to which it refers. The 
Mishnah form, however, is, I think, exclusively confined 
to interpretation which has for its subject-matter the 
preceptive side of Torah. The Midrash form was older 
than the Mishnah form.2 To teach in the Midrash 
form was called teaching “‘ after the manner of Moses ” 
(b. Temur, 15°). , 

I have been careful to remind the reader that the con- 
tents of Torah were of several kinds and the consequent 
interpretation of Torah of several types, in order to prepare 
the way for the study of the two main heads under which 
the results of the interpretation of Torah are classified. 
When interpretation dealt with the preceptive portion 
of Torah, the result deduced was called Halachah, nobn; 
when it dealt with the non-preceptive portion, for the 

tb. Kidd, 49°. 


* See on the whole subject the most illuminating essay of Lauter- 
bach, Midvash and Mishnah. 


TORAH AND TRADITION 71 


purpose of edification, the result was called Haggadah 
min. Both of these famous terms belong to the very 
essence of the Pharisaic Midrash ; and it will be necessary 
to study each of them with care, in order to understand 
what the Pharisees aimed at in their teaching and how 
far they attained their object. The term Haggadah is 
probably of earlier origin than the other, as will be 
shown below; but it will be more convenient to treat 
first of Halachah. 

The Torah, as written, contains a large number of 
precepts—positive and negative commands—enjoined 
upon Israel. These are, ex hypothest, directions divinely 
revealed for the guidance of those to whom the Torah was 
given. They were intimations of the will of God, and 
they carried with them the demand for obedience. When 
the Torah was raised to the position of being the supreme 
authority for the life of the Jewish people, and when the 
people pledged themselves to accept it as such, they 
pledged themselves to do what the Torah told them to do. 
It was, as we have seen, one of the main characteristics of 
the reform instituted by Ezra that he insisted on the 
individual duty and responsibility of each member of 
the community to obey the commands contained in the 
Torah. Therein was declared the will of God, as it con- 
~ cerned each individual Jew, and he could only discharge 
that responsibility by obedience complete and unhesi- 
tating. Not to do so would be to disown his fellowship 
in the community of Israel, and with it his loyalty to 
God. 

Now the Torah, as written, left the Jew at many points 
without specific directions, gave him no clear intimation, 
or no intimation at all, as to what the divine will was in 
such-and-such a case. Therefore the Torah needed an 
interpreter who should be able to deduce from what it 
did say in one case what it would say in another case if it 
had expressly dealt with that other case. The germ of 
the Pharisaic interpretation is to be found, I believe, in 
the passage already cited, Exodus xviii. 20, where it is 
said: ‘“‘ And thou shalt make clear to them the statutes 


72 THE PHARISEES 


and the toroth, and make known to them the way wherein 
they should walk and the thing which they should do.” 
This exactly indicates the object constantly kept in view 
in the Pharisaic interpretation of the preceptive portion 
of the Torah. That object was attained when some 
religious duty was defined by competent authority in a 
clear statement which served to guide the person concerned 
in the way that he should go. Such a statement, containing 
a rule of right conduct, was called a ‘ halachah.’ ! 


t The word nzbn is derived from 75m to walk, to go. It is 
a Hebrew word, not found in the Old Testament, but belonging 
to the New Hebrew of the Mishnah, and of quite regular formation. 
There is no sufficient reason to regard it as a translation from the 
Aramaic, and good reason against so doing. For it was always 
a term of the schools, meaning by the schools the assemblies of the 
accredited teachers who interpreted the Torah on Pharisaic lines. 
And it is not in the least likely that those teachers would go 
outside the range of the sacred language to borrow a word whereby 
to designate a conception derived immediately from the Torah, 
and suggested by, though not contained in, the actual text. The 
word is formed from 75m in the same way as IN, 797, 7D 
mwat, mpm from their respective roots. The idea denoted by 
this word must have been known at a very early stage in the Pharisaic 
interpretation of Torah; but it is curious that there is no trace 
of the first beginnings of its use. When we first meet with it in the 
Mishnah it is used as a technical term apparently quite familiar, 
and with nothing to make it likely that it was then of recent 
origin. The earliest instance that I have so far been able to find is 
M. Peah ii. 6 where, in reference to a doubtful case brought before 
Rn. Gamliel I, itis said: ‘‘ They went up to the Lishkath-ha-gazith 
and asked there. Nahum the writer (libellarius) said: I have 
received from R. Measha, who received from his father, who received 
from the Zigoth, who received from the Prophets, (it is) a hala- 
chah of Moses from Sinai, that,’’ etc. This refers to a time before 
the fall of Jerusalem but after the beginning of the common era. 
DD mw mon is itself a technical term, whose origin is far earlier 
than this use of it. The word 35m occurs in the story about 
Jehudah b. Tabbai and Simeon b. Shetah, b. Hagg. 16> which would 
bring it to eighty years B.c. But it is not there represented that 
J. b. T. himself used the word. If the story in b. Pes. 66* is to be 
relied on (and it is a Baraitha, i.e. contemporary with the Mishnah), 
Hillel used the word, “‘nynw i moon I have heard this hala- 
chah’’; and here also it is presumed to be quite familiar to the 
hearers and not of recent origin. Hillel was probably earlier by 


TORAH AND TRADITION 73 


I believe that this is the original application of the 
term. It denoted a statement as to conduct applicable to 
such-and-such a particular case. Only when the number 
of separate halachoth, mis%m had become very great, 
making it necessary to classify and co-ordinate them, 
did the term acquire the generic meaning of the whole 
defined meaning of the Torah on its preceptive side. 
In that sense it is correct to speak of the Halachah much 
as one speaks of the Law as distinguished from particular 
Laws. It is known that R. Akiba (d. 135 c.E.) laid the 
foundations of the great organised collection of halachoth, 
which afterwards became the Mishnah; and I think it 
probable that he did so because he had arrived at the 
conception of the Halachah as an organic whole, no 
longer a mere collection of separate items. 

A halachah, according to the Pharisaic theory of the 
Torah already explained, was a specific declaration of 
the divine will applicable to a given case; and, as such, 
it was binding on all who accepted the Torah as their 
supreme authority, and professed to ‘ walk’ in the way 
which it indicated. Obviously, the task of defining the 
halachah was one of extreme importance, because it 
meant legislating for all who accepted the Pharisaic 


a whole generation than the Nahum mentioned above. I have not 
met with any attempt to trace the origin and history of the word 
nodn, and I have given only the scanty result of my own inquiry. 

Neither have I found any precise and complete explanation of 
the reason why that particular word was used or coined in order 
to denote that particuJar idea. Jewish writers, as is only natural, 
usually take for granted that their readers understand what is 
meant, and perhaps would not be interested in the etymological 
problem. The Aruch comes nearest to such an explanation when 
it says: boww we AD TW oTpD Nar inv ras xnsdn wr 
292 poonny (Aruch. s.v. “pAle Levy’s Worterbuch gives no help, 
nor does Frankel, Darké ha-Mishnah, nor Weiss, Dér Dér, valuable 
as these works are in other respects. The fullest account of 
Halachah which I know is contained in an essay, “‘ Zur Einleitung 
in die Halacha,’’ by M. Guttmann, published in the Jahresbericht 
dey Landes-Rabbinerschule in Budapest, 1909 and 1913. I am 
indebted for the opportunity of reading this to my friend Dr. 
Marmorstein, of the Jews’ College, London. 


74 THE PHARISEES 


principle. It could not be, and it certainly was not, left 
to any individual teacher, still less to any individual 
Jew, to determine the halachah according to his own 
private judgment. It was always defined after consulta- 
tion amongst the accredited teachers at any period of 
history, the supreme religious legislative body whatever 
it might be, whether the great Beth-Din in Jerusalem or, 
after the fall of Jerusalem, the Assembly of the Rabbis 
at Jabneh or Usha or Tiberias. The decision was based 
on a most careful and thorough study of the Torah, both 
written and unwritten, and the result was finally deter- 
mined by the vote of a majority. A halachah so defined 
was thenceforth binding on all Jews, at least on all who 
followed the Pharisees; and it could not be repealed 
or annulled except by the majority vote of another 
Assembly which excelled the earlier one in wisdom and 
number (M. Edu. i. 5). On the other hand, no Beth-Din 
could impose a law upon the community (apparently 
even though it was theoretically a halachah) unless the 
majority of the community were able to bear it (b. A. 
Zar. 36°, B. Bathr. 60°). The dispersion of the Jewish 
people which took place, to some extent after the fall of 
Jerusalem, and to a much larger extent after the war of 
Bar Cocheba, prevented the growth of a uniform Halachah 
binding on all Jews, because there was no longer one 
central authority competent to legislate. But, for Jews 
in any one locality, the Halachah was decided by the 
authority of that place in the manner described above; 
and for the understanding of the practical effect and work- 
ing of Halachah this is all that is of importance. 

For the individual Pharisee the Halachah furnished the 
answer to the perpetually recurring question, What 
was the divine will concerning him in this or that or the 
other specific case? What did God command him to 
do in such-and-such circumstances ? And, regarding as 
he did the Torah as God’s especial revelation given to 

t The student who wishes to pursue the subject will find a mass 


of detail, well arranged and admirably handled, in Guttmann’s 
essay already referred to, “‘ Zur Einleitung in die Halachah,” 


TORAH AND TRADITION 75 


Israel, His choicest blessing bestowed on His people, the 
Pharisee rejoiced when he learned the halachah which he 
needed. Everything which was then enjoined, whether 
to do or to refrain from doing, was a command, mitzvah, 
mize, and every mitzvah was an opportunity of serving 
God by doing His will. To do the will of God, as com- 
pletely and as exactly as he could, was the aim and end 
of the Pharisee so far as the religion of Torah related to 
conduct; and, if the mitzvoth were many and minute, 
the knowledge of the divine will and the opportunity 
for exact performance of it were by so much the more 
made accessible to him. Therefore, the attitude of the 
-Pharisee towards the mitzvoth and the Halachah which 
interpreted them and enlarged their scope was that of 
willing and joyful acceptance, because he felt that the. 
goodness of God was bestowed on him in that special 
way. Christians, who have learned, chiefly from Paul, 
to talk about the ‘ burden of the Law’ and the ‘ bondage’ 
in which it holds those who live under it, are seldom aware 
of the point of view of those who have had experience 
of it during the whole of their lives, and who have not 
broken away from it as Paul did. I shall attempt in a 
later chapter to estimate the effect of the Halachah 
and the mitzvoth upon the mental and spiritual de- 
velopment of the Pharisee. At present I will point out 
one or two facts which need to be considered in this 
connection. 

The Halachah was intended to cover the whole of 
practical life, not merely for the individual but for the 
community, and to do that by bringing to bear upon every 
question the specific teaching of the Torah. Therefore 
the Halachah had to fulfil, amongst other functions, 
that of a body of civil and criminal law, such as every 
community needs. Of course, the Jew living under 
the Roman Government, or the later Persian or French 
or Spanish or British or what not, was bound by the 
law of the country in which he lived, as was expressed 
in the famous dictum of Samuel, the great Babylonian 
teacher of the third century, ‘‘ the law of the Government 


76 THE PHARISEES 


is law,” set smobet wot (b. B.K. 113°). But the 
Jew needed a code of Jaw, civil and criminal, based on the 
Torah, since that was the supreme authority for the whole 
of his life, individual and social. Now in every nation 
which has a code of civil and criminal law, the individual 
citizen seldom feels the constraint of more than a small 
part of its provisions; so under the Halachah, the indi- 
vidual Pharisee in his practical life would have no concern 
with a large number of the separate halachoth, and what- 
ever burden they might impose he would not feel it. 
On the other hand, it is true that the Halachah, besides 
regulating the social conduct of the Pharisee on the lines 
of civil and criminal law, prescribed with great minuteness 
very many actions of his private life. Whether in this 
respect the Halachah was felt to be a burden is a question 
which will be answered in very different ways according 
as the Halachah is regarded as the ascertained and declared 
will of God, or as the decree of an external and irresponsible 
authority exercised by merely human agents with no 
divine guidance behind them. I am not attempting to 
estimate the absolute worth of the system, or comparing 
its standard with that of other systems; I am simply 
trying to present, as clearly as I can, and without pre- 
judice in favour of some other system, the Halachah as 
the Pharisee understood it and lived under it. 

The essence of the Halachah was the doing of an action 
exactly in the appointed way, because that was what 
God commanded. Obviously, therefore, the question 
did not arise for the Pharisee whether the prescribed 
action in a given case was trivial or important. That was 
no concern of his, though he was perfectly well aware 
that merely considered by themselves some were trivial 
and some important. So, also, the Pharisee was quite 
aware that the doing of an action in this way rather than 
in that did not really matter so far as the mere doing of 
the action was concerned. What did matter, the only 
thing that gave religious meaning to the action and made 
the doing of it a religious duty, was the belief that it was 
the express will of God that it should be done so and not 


TORAH AND TRADITION 77 


otherwise.t The action by itself, without the conscious 
intention of serving God by the doing of it, was worthless. 

Now wherever a Jew lived in the same locality with 
Gentiles, his observance of the Halachah would at once 
draw attention to him. The Gentile would notice that 
the Jew did many special acts as a religious duty, 
that he made a point of doing many things, in 
themselves apparently trivial, in a particular way, and 
that he refrained from doing other things which to the 
Gentile seemed harmless or indifferent. The Jew, in 
these matters, was evidently bound by a law, and that 
a very strict one. Whether the Gentile ever sought to 
know the reason why the Jew acted as he did, or would have 
understood if the reason had been explained to him, is 
not now the question. The point is that his obedience 
to the Halachah was the only side which the Gentile 
could in general observe of the religious life of the Jew; 
it was that side where his religion found its most charac- 
teristic expression in action. Not, indeed, its only expres- 
sion in action, because the Jew, as a humane and philan- 
thropic man, did not wait for the directions of the Hala- 
chah to prescribe all his acts of kindness or to define 
the limits of his sympathy. It was certainly a mitzvah 
to help the poor and relieve the oppressed. But the 
kind heart and the generous hand could find their own 
way of fulfilling that mitzvah. But, apart from these, 
the fact remains that on the whole that side of the life 
of the Jew which chiefly came under the notice of Gentile 
neighbours and marked him off as different from them 
was the side which was concerned with the Halachah. 
And, as the Halachah was the Torah on its preceptive 
side, made definite and explicit, ] believe that here is to 
be found the reason why Torah was always rendered in 
Greek by voyuos, and why in all languages it is rendered 
by the equivalent of Law. Few Gentiles were or are in 
a position to know that Halachah was only one element 
in Torah, not the whole of it, as will be shown when we 

1 See this very clearly stated by Johanan b. Zaccai, Pesikta 
R.K., 40°. 


78 THE PHARISEES 


come to consider the Haggadah. Paul, who as a former 
Jew did not know what else there was in Torah besides 
Halachah, has inflicted upon the Jews an injury without 
excuse by steadily ignoring that other element, in order 
to build upon that omission his argument for the superiority 
of the Gospel over the Law.! 

I go on now? to examine that other constituent element 
in the Torah, the Haggadah, having, I trust, given a 
sufficient explanation of the theory of the Halachah. A 
detailed survey of the Halachah in all its ramifications 
is utterly beyond my power, as it is far too great in mass 
of material to be included in a single book. Maimonides 
took fourteen books, now printed in four folio volumes, 
in which to expound it; and he was not a spendthrift 
of words. But it is enough for the present purpose if 
the reader understand what the Halachah was, and in 
what way it regulated the religious life of the Pharisaic 
Jew on its practical side. 

The term Haggadah, 71273 denotes the interpretation 


t See also below, in the chapter on the Pharisees in the New 
Testament. 

a In my earlier book, Pharisaism, I separated Halachah from 
Haggadah, dealing with the former in Chapter II, with the latter 
not till Chapter V. This was necessary because the limit of time 
imposed by a series of lectures made it impossible to deal with both 
in a single lecture. As I am at present under no such restriction 
of time or space, I include Haggadah where it properly belongs, 
in the chapter which deals with Torah and Tradition. 

3 The best explanation that I know of the origin and meaning of 
the word 7737 is that given by Bacher, in the J.Q.R., 1892, pp. 406 ff. 
He points to the very frequent use of the phrase 4'3n or 43 in 
the older Tannaitic Midrash, especially of the school of R. Ishmael. 
The subject of this verb is 3}nDn, expressed or understood. The 
phrase is used to introduce an explanation of some text under 
consideration, or to develop something contained or hinted in it. 
Literally it means: “‘ The Scripture declares or teaches’ such-and- 
such a lesson. From this use of the verb was formed the noun 
min to denote the lesson so taught, and originally the word was 
applicable to all the results of the interpretation of Scripture; but 
when the Halachah began to be recognised and studied as a special 
department of Torah, and as the result of a special branch of inter- 
pretation, then the name Haggadah, which had been of general 


TORAH AND TRADITION 79 


of Scripture in general or of the Torah in particular, for 
edification and not directly for the regulation of conduct. 
The process was based on the axiom that the Torah 
contained the whole revelation which God had given to 
Israel; and the interpretation whose result was Hagga- 
dah was the process of drawing forth all else that the 
Torah contained, other than precept, for the purpose of 
making clear the religious and moral lessons to be found 
there. The subject-matter of the Haggadah included, 
therefore, all that in other religions is covered by the 
term Doctrinal Theology, it also included what would 
be assigned to ethics, psychology and metaphysics. Not, 
indeed, that there was any systematic study of philosophy 
in the interpretation of Torah, but that the problems of 
thought and experience which provide the main themes 
of philosophy were, so far as they came within the range 
of Jewish thought in Talmudic times, dealt with on the 
lines of Haggadah. That is, the interpretation of Torah 
was made the means of finding answers to such questions 
as came before the minds of the Jewish teachers con- 
cerning God, his works and ways and attributes, the 
nature and origin and destiny of man, his relation to 
God, the mystery of evil and many other kindred topics. 
It was self-evident that if there was anything to be 
learned on these subjects it must be learned from the 
Torah, and what the Torah declared, ‘ higgid,’ when 
rightly interpreted, was what God had revealed in the 
Torah. Any explicit statement of the teaching so 
declared in a single passage of Torah was a ‘ haggadah’ ; 
and the sum total of such teaching came to be called by 


application, came to be reserved for such results of interpretation 
of Torah as were not concerned with its preceptive portion. This 
is, in fact, what Haggadah does mean; and all the descriptions 
given by way of indicating the nature of Haggadah, e.g. tale, legend, 
fanciful narrative, etc., are good enough as showing some of the 
forms which the Haggadah took, but they do not explain why it 
took those forms. The form nx, often found, especially in the 
Palestinian Talmud, is only a New Hebrew variant, not an Aramaic 
form. Agada is the form generally used by German and other 
Continental writers, Haggadah by English ones. 


80 THE PHARISEES 


the generic term the Haggadah. Thus, Halachah and 
Haggadah between them divided the whole contents of 
Torah ; they were each in their way the explicit state- 
ment of what was implicit in the Torah, the unfolding 
of its hidden meaning so that it could be received and 
apprehended in human minds. 

It is easy to see that the Haggadah allowed of much 
greater variety of treatment than Halachah. As the 
object in view was not the definition of a strict rule of 
conduct, but the building up of character and the quicken- 
ing of spiritual and moral life, the teacher was free to 
use other means than those of severe logic and strict 
attention to precedent. Haggadah was largely the result 
of allowing imagination to play round and over the con- 
tents of the Scripture, the imagination of men whose 
purpose was to teach religion, yet at the same time the 
imagination of men quick-witted and discerning, who 
had a deep if not a wide. knowledge of human nature, 
and who were accustomed to meditate on the problems 
of religion and religious experience. Haggadah was the 
field where thought found free outlet; for whereas the 
Halachah was only defined and settled by the vote of a 
majority after careful deliberation, the Haggadah was 
under no such restriction. Probably no one except an 
accredited teacher would be in a position to declare and 
teach Haggadah at all; but I believe it is true to say 
that any such teacher was free to teach Haggadah if he 
had any to teach, if he had so studied and meditated 
upon Torah that he could bring forth the fruits of his 
meditation in some form that proved helpful to those 
who heard it. There were great masters of Haggadah 
among the Talmudic Rabbis who devoted themselves 
to this form of study and teaching; but so far as I 
know there was nothing to prevent less eminent men 
from trying to do the same thing. If they succeeded, 
in however small a degree, they added something to the 
treasure of religious thought and instruction which was 
the inheritance of the Jewish community, enlarged and 
enriched with each generation. If they did not succeed 


TORAH AND TRADITION 81 


there was nothing lost, since they had had-nothing to 
give. But they were not fettered by any requirement 
of doctrinal uniformity, for no one was obliged to assent 
to any haggadah which was told him, as if it were an 
article in a creed. It was no argument against a hag- 
gadah that it differed from, or even contradicted, another 
haggadah on the same subject. There were, on the 
Rabbinical theory, many meanings in the Torah, even in 
a single sentence of the Torah. God could say many 
things in one utterance; and the more of these could be 
unfolded and declared and learned, so much the more 
was God’s purpose fulfilled in giving the Torah (see 
Yalk. Shimoni. on Ps. Ixii. 11, § 783). 

Haggadah, therefore, in the practice of those who 
expounded it, took such forms as stories founded on the 
lives of persons mentioned in Scripture, parables to 
illustrate types of character in which some virtue or vice 
was conspicuous, plays of fancy based on some slight 
hint hidden in a Scripture phrase, arbitrary changes in 
the wording of a text for the sake of pointing a moral 
or deducing a religious lesson, even sometimes mere 
freaks of wit and grotesque fancy, intended, we may 
suppose, to arrest the attention of a drowsy audience. 
Almost everything that imagination could do is repre- 
sented in the Haggadah. Almost, but not everything. 
The Haggadists never so far lost sight of their true func- 
tion as religious teachers that they would allow their 
imagination to descend to coarse and unclean jesting. 
There is much plain speaking in the Rabbinical literature 
upon sexual matters; but I do not believe that there is 
a single story in the whole of the Haggadah which was 
told with a prurient purpose, or a play of wit in which 
the point depends on its obscenity. The absence of such 
features may by some be deemed a defect ; but, whether 
defective or not, the Haggadah is, so far as I have studied 
it, entirely free from that kind of literary embellishment. 

As for the profanity which is sometimes charged against 
the Haggadah, there is some apparent ground for the 
charge; for the imagination of the Haggadist did some- 

6 


82 THE PHARISEES 


times allow him to take considerable liberties with the 
thought of God and His dealings with mankind. Hag- 
gadoth could be quoted which on the face of them cer- 
tainly do seem to be highly irreverent in expression. 
Yet the intention was certainly not irreverent; and 
the reader, at all events the Gentile reader, needs to be 
very cautious in taking a piece of Haggadah at its face 
value. Gentiles usually are not aware of this. 

Haggadah, as already explained, is largely a work of 
imagination, a free creation of motive and incident for 
the purpose of teaching a religious or moral lesson. 
Statements of such a character are obviously of no value 
as evidence for the alleged historical events to which 
they purport to refer. Both the Haggadists and their 
hearers were quite aware of this, or would have been if 
they had thought about it, for such a question would 
probably seldom if ever arise. But a Haggadist was in 
no way debarred from referring to persons and incidents 
within his own immediate knowledge, such as the inci- 
dents of the war against Vespasian and Titus, or those 
of the three years’ Terror which followed the defeat of 
Bar Cocheba. The Haggadah includes all that the 
teachers who lived through those terrible times had to 
say about them; but the mistake of rejecting it all as 
unreliable invention is only committed by those who 
have but a slight and general acquaintance with Hag- 
gadah, and is readily avoided by those who have the 
patience to consider such statements each on its own 
merits. So studied, the Haggadah is an indispensable 
help in reconstructing the history of the times when its 
exponents lived. The foregoing account may serve to 
indicate the nature and intention of the Haggadah as 
the other element along with the Halachah of the defined 
contents of the Torah. I shall now, in the remainder of 
this chapter, deal with their respective relation to 
Tradition. 

It has already been shown that the conception of the 
unwritten Torah was arrived at by combining Torah with 
Tradition, the unwritten Torah being regarded as teaching 


TORAH AND TRADITION 83 


which had been handed down along with the written 
Torah as its true interpretation. To those who first 
made use of the conception of the unwritten Torah, i.e. the 
earliest Pharisaic teachers properly so called, the Tradition 
to which they appealed must necessarily have been indefi- 
nite in form though sufficient in substance. In other 
words, they could appeal to the general fact, or at all 
events presumption, that what they taught as their 
interpretation of Torah rested on Tradition; but they 
could seldom if ever point to a precise authority for that 
interpretation in the words of some older teacher. But 
the case was different when, as time went on, a definite 
halachah was taught upon this or that particular case, 
or when some teacher of eminence gave his opinion that 
the halachah was so and so. By the accumulation of 
such decisions and opinions a quite definite Tradition 
was gradually formed, resting for the most part upon 
the authority of teachers whose names were known, at 
all events at first, though forgotten later The develop- 
ment of Halachah was, as already shown, of vital impor- 
tance in the religious and moral life of the Pharisees, 
and it would have been folly and contempt of the divine 
teaching to have allowed those earlier results of the 
interpretation of Torah to be forgotten almost as soon as 
uttered. It is true that even the marvellous Jewish 
memory could not carry it all; but it was always made 
a part of the strict discipline connected with the study 
of Torah to learn and to hand down from teacher to 
pupil the results already defined in the field of Halachah. 
Each generation added its own contribution to what it 
had received from the past; and this lengthening chain 
of transmitted teaching, of which the several halachoth 
were the separate links, is what is known (at all events 
in the New Testament) as the Tradition of the Elders. 


t In the New Testament zapddootg tHv mpeoButépwv, Mark vii. 5 
and elsewhere. It is curious that the phrase, in this form, does not 
seem to occur in the Rabbinical literature. mip was, of course, in 
common use, meaning tradition, but not combined with p‘:prn, the 
Elders. Usually it appears in the form )MyAND 139 XN ANON, 


84 THE PHARISEES 


At any given date at which the Tradition is examined, 
it is found (or would be if the material were completely 
preserved) to consist of a smaller or greater number of 
halachoth relating to a great variety of cases. The 
necessity made itself felt, as time went on, of reducing 
to some kind of order the ever-growing collection of 
halachoth; and possibly Hillel, but more probably 
R. Akiba, made the first attempt at a classified arrange- 
ment of them. R. Akiba’s death in the War of Bar 
Cocheba prevented his completion of the work. What 
he began was taken up and carried further by his greatest 
disciple, R. Meir, until in the next generation the work 
was completed, substantially at all events, in the 
Mishnah of Rabbi, Judah the Prince. The Mishnah was 
accepted as the authoritative statement of the Hala- 
chah, and such it has ever since remained. But not on 
that account did- the jchain of Tradition cease from 
lengthening, for the Mishnah in its turn became the subject 
of study and explanation in the schools of Palestine and 
Babylonia. The main object of such study was to verify 
the Halachah by establishing its connection with Torah, 
elucidating its meaning, and, in fact though not in so 
many words, bringing it up to date by showing how it 
was to be applied to the circumstances of the time. The 
result of such study of the Mishnah was called Gemara ; 
and the Mishnah, together with its Gemara, makes up 
the Talmud. There is only one Mishnah, but there are 
two Talmuds, known as the Palestinian or Jerusalem 
and the Babylonian respectively, from the countries 
where the Gemara was developed. For details on all 
this, see articles in the Jewish Encyclopedia. 

The Tradition of the Elders represents the develop- 
ment of the Halachah. Historically it was made up of 
decisions and opinions formulated in each successive 


‘we have this tradition from our fathers,” as in j. Shek. 48°, though 
this instance refers to a family tradition and not to the main tradition 
of the Halachah. Of the fact implied in Tyadition of the Elders, 
though not of the precise phrase, the classical illustration is 
M. Aboth i. 1, :ywrm> mon) DD mn Sa AwH | 


TORAH AND TRADITION 85 


generation and handed on to the next. The Rabbis 


were perfectly aware of this; and besides recording the 


names (when known) of those teachers whose definition 
of this or that halachah had been adopted and confirmed, 
they were often able to say that such-and-such a halachah 
had been established in such-and-such an Assembly. 
Many halachoth were of unknown origin, and of these 
some were attributed in general terms to the Sopherim, 
and some few were expressly described as “ halachah 
(imparted) to Moses from Sinai,” ‘09 mwn> modr.t 
There was some uncertainty as to which halachoth ought 
to be described by that term; in some cases a halachah 
so described was shown to have been defined by some 
well-known teacher. But the phrase always served as a 
reminder, if reminder were needed, that the tradition of 
Halachah began with Moses. And the Pharisaic theory 
is elucidated by the answer given to R. Akiba by some 
of his disciples, which implies that the whole Torah is 
Halachah of Moses from Sinai (b. Nidd 45°). For the 
Pharisaic theory was this, that the whole Torah, as it 
existed in the mind of God was imparted.to Moses, not 
explicitly but implicitly, and that the whole process of 
interpretation consisted in rendering explicit what up till 
then had been implicit, drawing forth some meaning or 
lesson unknown till then, but which had been in the Torah 
all the time. The divine revelation could never be 
exhausted, and therefore every fresh interpretation, 
though in appearance it were new, was really old—a 
thought in the divine mind for the first time apprehended 
by the human mind. And this is what is meant when 
it was said (j. Peah 17°): “‘ Whatever an acute disciple 
shall hereafter teach in the presence of his Rabbi has 
already been said to Moses on Sinai.’ That dictum of 
R. Joshua b. Levi, which on the face of it appears 
to be and is sometimes hastily taken to be a mere 


t See Kohler Festschrift, pp. 56-70, Bacher’s article on “‘ Satzung 
von Sinai.” 

2 See the whole passage j. Peah ii. 5, which contains some very 
instructive remarks on the Pharisaic theory of tradition. 


86 THE PHARISEES 


absurdity of exaggeration, sums up in a sentence the 
Pharisaic theory of the definition and transmission of 
Halachah. 

It was only in the department of Halachah that the 
idea of Tradition was worked out to its fullest extent, 
because, as already shown, the results obtained by the 
interpretation of Torah on its Halachic side were binding 
and regulative in a way that the Haggadah was not. 
Yet the results of Haggadic interpretation of Torah 
were also valuable as being the fruits of the wisdom and 
piety of the great “‘ Masters in Israel’’; and it was an 
obvious duty to gather up those fruits for future use. 
There was no Haggadic Tradition of the Elders, but 
there was an immense amount of Haggadah taught and 
handed down and finally collected for the instruction of 
later generations. Some of this material found a place 
in the Talmud, but the great mass of it is now to be read 
in the Midrashim. Excluding those known by the titles 
of Mechilta, Siphra and Siphre, which are mainly hala- 
chic, there are a great number of haggadic midrashim, 
large and small, from the Midrash Rabbah at the one 
extreme to the smallest piece edited by Jellinek or 
Eisenstein at the other. These are all traditional in the 
sense that they contain the teaching handed down from 
earlier times, sometimes centuries earlier than the date 
when the collection was made. But there was not such 
a progressive development of Haggadah as there was of 
Halachah. It is accurate to distinguish between the 
older Halachah and the younger, between the Halachah 
as it was in the time of Hillel, and the Halachah as it 
was in the time of Akiba or of Rabbi. But it would not 
be accurate to distinguish, unless in a very general way, 
between an older and a younger Haggadah. For the 
Haggadah was the result of continual meditation upon 
the sacred themes contained in the Torah and presenting 
themselves to the mind; and those sacred themes 
remained for the most part unchanged, while men with 
different gifts of thought and imagination, different 
degrees of spiritual insight, and different occasions to 


TORAH AND TRADITION 87 


draw forth their powers, brought forth the fruit of their 
meditation in endless variety. 

Such then, finally, was the Pharisaic conception of 
Torah, the divine revelation given to Israel through 
Moses, God’s teaching to His people, instructing them 
what it was his will that they should do, the way in 
which they should walk—Halachah ; and imparting to 
them the lessons of truth and wisdom whereby they 
could become what His children should be—Haggadah. 
So regarded, it was only natural, as it was entirely right, 
for the Pharisaic teachers whose thoughts are enshrined 
in the Talmud and the Midrash, to exalt the Torah to 
the utmost height that speech could attain, as the supreme 
gift which the divine goodness had bestowed on the 
people whom He had chosen. They would have been 
unworthy of that gift if they had neglected to preserve, 
from age to age, the words in which its meaning was 
unfolded, and its hidden treasures gradually brought to 
light, or if they had ceased in their age-long search to 
know ever yet more of the deep things of God. Accord- 
ing to the light vouchsafed to them and the way pointed 
out to them, the Pharisees and their successors, through 
all the Christian centuries, have been faithful, and have 
endured the scorn and reviling of men because they 
trusted in God and were not ashamed. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE PHARISEES AND THE SYNAGOGUE 


For the sake of greater clearness of presentation of the 
whole subject, I reserve for separate treatment in this 
chapter a topic which is closely related both to the 
history of the Pharisees as described in Chapter II 
and their theory of Torah and Tradition explained in 
Chapter III. I refer to the Synagogue, which was pre- 
eminently a Pharisaic institution, and one without which 
the maintenance and development of their religious and 
moral life, whether communal or individual, afe scarcely 
conceivable. When I say that the Synagogue was pre- 
eminently a Pharisaic institution, I do not mean that the 
Pharisees created it, for its origin dates, in all probability, 
from a time before the Pharisees had appeared. I mean 
that the Pharisees, when they did appear, found in the 
Synagogue an institution with whose purpose they were 
in the closest sympathy and whose influence they did 
their utmost to strengthen and extend. They controlled 
the ritual of the Temple by imposing their will upon 
the Sadducean priests, as shown above (p. 47); but 
they were at home in the Synagogue, and developed its 
two functions of worship and instruction without external — 
constraint. If it had been~otherwise, if the Pharisees 
had been obliged to capture the Synagogue as they 
captured the Temple, it is hard to see how they could 
have won the devoted adherence of the majority of 
the people, as it is common knowledge that they did. 
For the Synagogue was in every village, while the Temple 
was only in Jerusalem ; and while it is of course perfectly 
true that the Temple so long as it stood was the visible 
88 


THE PHARISEES AND THE SYNAGOGUE 89 


expression of the religion of the whole people, collec- 


_ tively, yet the Synagogue was the expression of their 


religion day by day and week by week, for Jews, not 
collectively as a nation, but as friends, and neighbours, 
dwellers in the same village, inhabiting the same country- 
side. The Temple was the altar, the Synagogue was 
the hearth, and the sacred fire burned on each of them. 
With the fall of the Temple the fire was quenched on 
the altar, stamped out under the brutal heel of the con- 
queror; but it still glowed on the hearth, and the Syna- 
gogue survived to shelter and preserve from that day to 
this the religion of the Pharisees. 

It will therefore be no digression from the main subject 
if I stop to dwell on the history and function of the 
Synagogue and upon its close association with the Phari- 
sees. The actual beginning of the Synagogue is unknown, 
and the first certain mention of it occurs at a date which 


must be far later than the institution itself. But it is 


generally agreed that the period of the Captivity presents 
the conditions under which the rise of the Synagogue 
can be most naturally explained. Among the many 
hardships and privations inflicted on those who were 
carried away to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar not the 
least would be the loss of the Temple and the impossi- 
bility of joining in the worship there. It is true that 
for the individual member of the nation the opportunity 
of actually attending the Temple service was only enjoyed 
a few times in the year, and we do not know whether 
any regular provision was made for the ministration of 
religion at other times and places. But, in any case, 
while the Temple stood, the Jew, wherever he lived, knew 
that the worship of the God of Israel was being offered 
in the ancient Sanctuary, on behalf and in the name of 
all the people. With the Exile that assurance came to 
an end. There was no Temple any more; the captives 
were deprived of what had been the chief external sup- 
port of their religion. The question could not fail to 
present itself to the minds of the more devout amongst 
them, What was to become of their religion? There is 


90 THE PHARISEES 


no record of what they did, nor indeed any probability 
that as a community the captives either could or did 
take any steps to answer the question forced upon them. 
But it seems very natural to suppose that here and there 
a few would meet together from time to time, neighbours 
and friends who had known each other in the old home- 
land, and would encourage and comfort one another under 
their present affliction. This is enough to account for 
what may be called the germ of the Synagogue—the 
occasional meeting of groups of people for religious pur- 
poses. Even this is pure conjecture, for there is no 
contemporary record of any sort to show that such 
meetings did in fact take place. But the conjecture has 
at least this much in its favour, that the periodical meet- 
ings which developed into the Synagogue must have 
begun some time, and the period of the Captivity pro- 
vides a stronger determining cause than any other period, 
because the people were then deprived of the Temple 
and of any other provision for religion, if there were any 
other, and were thrown entirely on their own resources, 
and that, too, in a heathen land. It is obvious that some 
means must have been devised by the exiles for the 
maintenance of their religion, for otherwise there would 
have been none left when the Captivity came to an end, 
and the exiles would have gone the way of the Ten 
Tribes. The same argument tends to show that the 
origin of the germ of the Synagogue after the return 
from Babylon is less probable, since the loss of the — 
Temple was in time made good by rebuilding it. More- 
over, the type of meeting and form of worship of the 
Synagogue, as it came to be known afterwards, point 
to an origin independent of the Temple and conceived 
on different lines. To attempt to imitate in Babylonia 
the Temple in Jerusalem was unthinkable, and even to 
symbolise its services by forms of prayer extremely 
unlikely. If the circumstances in which the exiles found 
themselves were at all like what I have suggested, then 
prayer would find some means of utterance through the 
mere need to pray; speech on sacred themes and instruc- 


THE PHARISEES AND THE SYNAGOGUE 91 


tion in the way of righteousness would find their oppor- 
tunity in any company meeting together. In such cir- 
cumstances the usage of the Temple could give no 
guidance, and instead, the first beginning was made of a 
type of worship which outlasted the Temple and has 
come down to the present day, the type of congre- 
gational worship without priest or ritual, still maintained 
substantially in its ancient form in the modern Syna- 
gogue, and still to be traced in the forms of Christian 
worship, though overlaid and distorted by many non- 
Jewish elements. In all their long history, the Jewish 
people have done scarcely anything more wonderful than 
to create the Synagogue. No human institution has a 
longer continuous history, and none has done more for 
the uplifting of the race. 

I place, then, in the period of the Captivity, the appear- 
ance of the germ of the Synagogue in simple meetings 
for worship and instruction. How these developed cannot 
be traced. But it is again reasonable to suppose that 
they gradually became regular by tending to associa- 
tion with the Sabbath, partly because that was the holy 
day from immemorial antiquity, and partly because it 
was the day of rest from ordinary work. If, as I have 
held to be probable, the original meetings began during 
the Captivity, the practice must have become so far 
established as to bear transplanting to Palestine after 
the return, for otherwise the process would have to have 
been started over again without its original determining 
cause. I am by no means suggesting that regular Syna- 
gogues were at once established by the returning exiles 
on their arrival, but only that the habit of meeting for 
worship and instruction, begun in Exile, was not wholly 
forgotten in the recovered homeland, and had sufficient 
vitality to take root and grow there. Such meetings do 
not necessarily imply:a special building set apart for 
them such as became usual in later times. Synagogues 
as assemblies may have been far older than the House 
of Meeting, no2>m mn, as it came.to be called. There 
is no certain mention of these till long after the return 


92 THE PHARISEES 


from the Captivity ; but when Ezra appointed the Torah 
to be read not only on the Sabbath but on the second 
and fifth day of the week (b. B.K. 82%), it is hard not 
to suppose that he made use for this purpose of assemblies 
of a religious character already in existence, and already 
to some extent spread through the land. 

It must be frankly admitted that the early stages of 
the development of the Synagogue are unknown, and 
that several questions of great interest must be left 
without answer in the absence of any evidence upon which 
an answer could be based. The Synagogue does not 
emerge into clear view until the time of the New Testa- 
ment and Josephus; but how it came to be such as it 
there appears can no longer be determined. To attempt 
a conjectural history would be mere waste of time, for 
where nothing is known anything is possible. Yet from 
the study of the Synagogue, as it is first clearly seen at 
the beginning of the common era, something may be 
learned ; not, indeed, of its history, but of its purpose and 
character. As regards its history, all that can be said 
is that at the time in question the Synagogue was already ~ 
recognised as ancient. ‘‘ For Moses from generations of 
old hath them in every city that preach him, being read 
in the Synagogues every Sabbath ”’ (Acts xv. 21). As to 
its nature and purpose, it was a local assembly for the 
promotion of religion through the two main functions of 
worship and instruction. This twofold purpose has been 
characteristic of the Synagogue in all ages of its known 
history, and should never be lost sight of. It presents — 
the earliest example on record of simple congregational 
worship, and in that capacity became the parent of the 
Christian Church. But it was also the place where the 
Torah was taught, and its lessons of religion and duty 
unfolded and applied for the benefit of the people. This 
function of teaching also was taken over by the Christian 
Church, but not to the same extent. No doubt the 
Church has always given instruction to its members; 
but the principal object of the Christian assembly in the 
sacred building has always been worship, whether praise, 


THE PHARISEES AND THE SYNAGOGUE 93 


prayer or sacramental rite. The principal object of the 
Jewish assembly in the Synagogue has always been to 
realise in experience the blessing of which the divinely 
given Torah was the revelation and the instrument. 
Worship was one way by which that blessing was realised, 
for worship brought the worshipper into communion 
with God; but meditation on the Torah was another 
way, and so was instruction, which brought forth and 
spread before the mind of the simple and unlearned the 
things which God had revealed in His Torah; and 
amongst those things revealed were the lessons of plain 
duty, showing how the will of God was to be done in 
‘the acts of the every-day life. I have distinguished a 
twofold purpose in the Synagogue, for so it appears to 
the non-Jewish observer ; but I should imagine that to a 
Jew this double function would appear single, and that 
the Synagogue was, and is, the place where the divine 
revelation makes its strongest appeal to his higher 
nature; an appeal, many-sided indeed, but yet coming 
to him from the one God through the one Torah. What- 
ever helped the Jew to feel that appeal and respond to 
it, had its rightful place in the Synagogue. 

As the earlier history of the institution is unknown, it 
is impossible to say whether at any time a change from 
some earlier type took place in the fundamental purpose 
of the Synagogue as just described. That its true func- 
tion came to be more clearly apprehended in course of 
time is only likely ; and with clearer apprehension would 
naturally come more adequate provision for the fulfil- 
ment of that function. But, assuming that Ezra did 
for the religion of Torah what has been shown in the 
preceding chapters, then the Synagogue, at whatever 
period it first became a defined institution, would 
naturally acquire some such character, and aim at dis- 
charging some such function as has been indicated above. 
Once it assumed that character it never afterwards lost 
it, and it keeps it still. 

If such were essentially the character and purpose of 
the Synagogue, then it is clear that such an institution 


94 THE PHARISEES 


must have been entirely congenial to the Pharisees. 
Their one concern was the Torah and the religion founded 
on it—the exercise of that religion in worship, the prac- 
tical application of it in the duties of life and the train- 
ing of the heart and mind to be in accord with the will of 
God. If they had started de novo to create an institution 
to fulfil this purpose, they could not have improved on 
the Synagogue. If they found it in existence when they 
appeared they could only hail it with joy. Whether as 
a defined institution it was historically earlier or later 
than the appearance of the Pharisees under that name 
cannot be determined with any certainty. But it seems 
to me most probable that as the Pharisees inherited the 
spirit of Ezra and carried on the ideas concerning Torah 
- which had come down through the Sopherim and the 
Hasidim, so those ideas found expression and appli- 
cation through such means as in ccurse of time became 
defined in the institution of the Synagogue. The two 
went side by side, and each naturally influenced the 
other. There were those who were devoted to the 
religion of Torah from the days of Ezra onwards. They 
cherished and developed the Synagogue; it helped and 
sustained them. That is the essential fact, and it is of 
but secondary importance to determine, if it were possible 
to do so, whether the Synagogue or the Pharisees first 
came by their definite and distinctive name. 

Another question, of great importance, indeed, but to 
which no completely satisfactory answer can be given, 
is, What was the relation in practice between the Temple 
and the Synagogue? The Temple was unique, the one 
central Sanctuary where the God of Israel could be wor- 
shipped with the due ceremony of sacrifice and ritual 
prescribed in the Torah. It was the visible symbol and 
outward expression of the religion of Israel for the whole 
nation. Round it gathered all the nobler emotions of 
the Jewish heart, from patriotic pride to the passionate 
devotion which finds utterance in so many of the Psalms. 
So long as the Temple stood, no other institution could 
rival its immense prestige. What place did the Syna- 


THE PHARISEES AND THE SYNAGOGUE 95 


gogue hold beside that august shrine? That question 
gains additional point from the fact that there was a 
_ Synagogue in the Temple itself. This seems to me a 
significant and suggestive fact, and one which has received 
less attention than it deserves. The fact itself is vouched 
for by passages in the Mishnah (Joma vii. 1) and 
Tosephta (Succ. iv. 12), which refer to the “ruler of the 
Synagogue ”’ (the dpytovvdywyos of the New Testament) and 
the “minister,” hazzan (dwnpérns). It was probably located 
in the Hall of Hewn Stones, Lishkath ha-gazith, where 
the Sanhedrin held its meetings.t In any case it met 
somewhere within the precincts of the Temple. Now it 
is generally admitted that the order of service in the 
Synagogue was made to correspond with that of the 
Temple, in so far that the prayers more or less repre- 
sented the sacrifices. The comparison is made in the 
Talmud (b. Ber. 26°), and is not disputed. It is also 
generally accepted, on the evidence of Talmudic tradition, 
that the main elements of the liturgy, in their earliest 
form, were instituted by the men of the Great Synagogue, 
i.e. the Sopherim. Whether any of their work still exists 
in its original form is very unlikely, but it is quite in 
accord with what we know of the ideas of the Sopherim 
that they should have taken careful thought for these 
matters. It goes without saying that such directions as 
were given, such forms as were appointed for the conduct 
of public worship, were sent out from Jerusalem, pre- 
sumably from the Sanhedrin, and if not from the Sanhe- 
drin as a whole then from those who represented the 
strict adherents of the Torah. The Synagogue would 
not have possessed a uniform type of service unless its 
development had been guided by some central authority. 
So far all is clear. But it is also generally assumed that 
the prayers, Psalms, etc., which made up the Synagogue 
service, as it was known, e.g. in Talmudic times, were 
originally appointed for and formed parts of the Temple 


1 See Herzfeld, Gesch. d. V. Israel, i. 393, §9. His location of 
the Synagogue in the Lishkath-ha-gazith is only conjectural, but 
his arguments seem to have much weight. 


96 THE PHARISEES 


service, presumably interspersed with the various sacri- 
fices and other ceremonies. That they were used in the 
Temple I am by no means prepared to deny; but it 
does not seem to me at all natural that they should have 
been combined with the ceremonial rites which formed 
the chief feature of the Temple service. If the prayers 
were to some extent modelled on the sacrifices, what 
need was there for both to be offered in the same service ? 
That some of the Psalms were eminently fitted to be 
sung in a ceremonial service may be readily admitted ; 
but it 1s no less obvious that many other Psalms were 
not. I suggest, therefore, that the institution of the 
prayers, etc., rightly ascribed to the Sopherim, was 
intended in the first instance for the Synagogue. The 
Temple already had its order of service in the ritual 
prescribed in the Torah. The Synagogue had not, and 
the Sopherim supplied its want by appointing an order, 
or at least the beginnings of an order. Whether the 
Synagogue in the precincts of the Temple already existed 
in the time of the Sopherim there is no evidence to 
show; but it must have made its appearance there at 
some point of time, and when it did it would bring with 
it such forms of prayer as were already customary in 
synagogues generally. Fromthis time on it would be liter- 
ally true to say that the prayers and Psalms, etc., were 
said or sung inthe Temple, while yet their place would 
be in the service of the Temple Synagogue and not in 
the Temple service properly so called. Again I press 
the question, If these prayers, etc., were included in the 
regular Temple service along with the sacrifices, etc., why 
repeat them all (without the sacrifices) in the Synagogue 
a few yards away? I[hold, therefore, that in all that is 
said in the Talmud and elsewhere about what was done 
in the Temple we may freely admit the fact of its all 
being done within the Temple precincts, but that we 
must distinguish between the ceremonial and the non- 
ceremonial elements, assigning the former to the proper 
ritual of the Temple and the latter, on the whole, to the 
service of the Synagogue which met within its walls. 


THE PHARISEES AND THE SYNAGOGUE 97 


As the Temple-Synagogue is known to the Mishnah, 
and no hint is given of its being recently established, it 
must have been already old at the beginning of the 
common era. Either it dates from the time (whenever 
that was) when first synagogues began to be organised, 
or else it was introduced into the Temple at some later 
time. Is it unreasonable to suggest that when the 
Pharisees enjoyed their golden age of power in the reign 
of queen Alexandra (see above Chapter II, pp. 47-8), and 
asserted that power in gaining control over the Temple 
services, they took the opportunity to plant a synagogue 
in the very Temple itself, so that their ideas of worship, 
of which the Synagogue was the embodiment, might be 
represented in the central Sanctuary ? Some such inten- 
tion seems to be suggested by the fact that there were 
very many ' synagogues in Jerusalem itself; for, if there 
were so many, why add another one in the Temple which 
already had its organised worship, without the need of 
what the Synagogue provided? Itis very different if the 
Synagogue were placed in the Temple to mark a certain 
new emphasis upon aspects of religion which the Temple 
was not historically fitted to represent. Further than 
this I do not venture to go, and must leave the suggestion 
for what it may be worth. 

The Synagogue, however and whenever it actually 
assumed the form in which it is known at the beginning 
of our area, was a factor of the very greatest importance 
in the life of the Jewish people. There was a synagogue 
in every village, and probably many in each of the larger 
towns. It was the natural centre for the religion of the 
people living near it, not merely through the services 
on the Sabbath, but through its teaching and its charities. 
Its influence would be felt all through the week, and 
more or less by all the inhabitants of the place, even 
though not all were equally zealous or zealous at all 
for religion. The Pharisees were marked out by their 


1 The number 480, given in j. Meg. 73°, cannot safely be relied 
on; but, unless the actual number had been considerable, the 
statement would have defeated its own purpose. 


7 


98 THE PHARISEES 


spiritual ancestry and their own principles as the natural 
leaders of the Synagogue. It gave them their oppor- 
tunity of bringing religion home to the people in the 
form in which it was most dear to themselves, They 
were, indeed, apparently the only teachers who made this 
their object. There is no mention, so far as I know, of 
Sadducean synagogues. The Sadducees, as has been 
shown above (Chapter II, p. 43), were not at all keen on 
spreading the knowledge of Torah amongst the people. 
It was sufficient that the knowledge of it should be, as 
of old, reserved for the priests. The Pharisees were the 
only ones who brought the Torah to the people and 
helped them to realise the blessing of it. This is not to 
say that all the people became Pharisees, for we know 
from Josephus (Ant. xvii. 2, 4) that the Pharisees in 
his time numbered only some few thousands among the 
whole population. But it explains very well how it was 
that the great majority of the people sided with the 
Pharisees, followed their lead and held them in honour 
and reverence. 

It should be remembered in this connection that the 
Pharisees represented the view that the Torah had been 
given to all Israel, and that the interpretation of it was 
not the exclusive privilege of the priests (see above, 
Chapter III, p. 62). This view influenced and even deter- 
mined the character of the synagogue, for it was essen- 
tially an institution of laymen. Priests were not, of 
course, excluded, and no doubt many of the Pharisees 
were priests. But no priest as such had any controlling 
function in the management of the synagogue. The 
sole qualification there was piety, knowledge of Torah 
and ability to communicate that knowledge; and that 
was not confined to any class of men, whether priests or 
not. There was no one who held the same position in 
regard to the synagogue which is held by the clergyman 
or minister of a Christian congregation in later times. A 
Rabbi, in the times when that title had become general, 
i.e. in the first century of the common era, was only a 
layman; and such authority as he exercised rested on 


THE PHARISEES AND THE SYNAGOGUE 99 


his own personal character and mental gifts, not upon 
any kind of ministerial office. A Rabbi was ordained to 
his office, it is true; but that meant that he was recog- 
nised as competent to interpret and teach the Torah—it 
did not place him in a sacred caste apart from his fellow- 
men. The worship of the synagogue was regulated by 
the members themselves under the leadership of those 
who, by gifts and character, were best fitted to lead; the 
prayers may have been usually recited by one person 
appointed for that duty, but members were called up to 
take part in the reading of the Torah and the: portion 
from the Prophets. If a discourse was given after the 
prayers, it was given by someone in the opinion of the 
ruler of the synagogue best qualified to give it. There 
was no stated preacher. When Paul and his companions 
went to the synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia (Acts xiii. 15) 
they were given the opportunity of speaking to the con- 
gregation, being merely visitors, not regular members, 
much less its appointed officers. It was in some such 
way that Jesus had his opportunity of speaking in the 
synagogue at Nazareth (Luke iv. 16), though there, indeed, 
it is only said that ‘‘ he stood up to read,” presumably 
the ‘haphtarah,’ or portion from the Prophets. 

This lay character of the organisation of the Syna- 
gogue was entirely in keeping with the principles of the 
Pharisees; not from any hostility to priests as such, 
but as expressing the view that the function of the 
priests was restricted to the Temple, and consisted in 
the due performance of the ritual appointed for that 
place. A priest was held in honour for his sacred office ; 
but that did not suffice to qualify him for the widely 
different duties which had to be fulfilled in the Syna- 
gogue, and there was no reason why, merely gud priest, 
he should expect, let alone claim, any position of privilege 
in regard to those duties. How far considerations of 
this kind were consciously present to the minds of those 
who developed the system of the Synagogue I do not 
know ; but this is clear, that it was the organisation of 
the Synagogue on non-priestly lines, as what would be 


100 THE PHARISEES 


called now a laymen’s church, which saved it from 
destruction when the Temple fell. The altar and the 
sacrifices could never be replaced unless or until the 
Temple was rebuilt, and never anywhere out of Jeru- 
salem; but the synagogue could be planted anywhere 
in the world where Jews were, and provide a local home 
for the religion of Torah under every sky. Already, 
when Jerusalem was captured, there were synagogues in 
every land, probably in every considerable city, of the 
then civilised world. And although from that day to 
this Jews have continued to pray for the rebuilding of 
Jerusalem and the restoration of the Temple, it is in the 
synagogue that they have uttered their prayers; and 
if it had not been for the synagogues, the prayers would 
have died into silence on the lips of a people dwindling 
to extinction. 

The Synagogue, as has been shown, was in full vigour 
at the beginning of our era; it was the only institution 
which ministered to the religion of the people in their 
daily and weekly life, and without making any extrava- 
gant claims on its behalf we may say with certainty 
that it did fulfil its primary function with a considerable 
measure of success. It is worth notice that Jesus, though 
he said hard things about the Pharisees, never said any- 
thing against the synagogues ; and it is said of him that 
it was his custom to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath 
day (Luke iv. 16). Now, while it is quite true that we 
do not know the exact date when the Synagogue first 
appeared on the scene of Jewish history, nevertheless 
its rise and development fall within the period covered by 
the dominant influence of Torah established by Ezra 
and the Sopherim. If that influence were of the kind 
commonly supposed by Christians, and its effect had 
been to sterilise the Jewish religion and turn its pro- 
phetic freedom into a legal bondage, then the Synagogue 
would have felt the full force of that influence, and 
would have been in no condition to keep alive the Jewish 
religion, or serve as the natural model for the newly — 
formed Christian Church. It did both of these things, and 


THE PHARISEES AND THE SYNAGOGUE 101 


didthem very thoroughly. If the influence of Ezra and the 
Sopherim, and the later Pharisees, were really a deaden- 
ing influence, then the Synagogue must have grown up 
as a protest against that influence; but there is not the 
slightest trace of any evidence to show that such protest 
was ever made, or the need of making it ever felt. The 
Synagogue is the organised embodiment of the religion of 
Torah or it is utterly meaningless. Whence the conclu- 
sion follows that the influence of Ezra and his later fol- 
lowers was not in the direction of reducing the Jewish 
religion to a barren legalism. The Synagogue was strong 
and flourishing at the beginning of our era. If it was 
then very ancient, dating back perhaps to the time of 
Ezra, then the supposed deadening power of the religion 
of Torah had not been able to stifle its vitality in all the 
centuries from his time to that of Jesus. And if the 
Synagogue were at this later date only of comparatively 
recent origin, then all the supposed deadening influence 
aforesaid was not strong enough to strangle at its birth 
an institution so full of spiritual vitality as it immediately 
proved itself to be. The sober truth of the matter is 
that the development of religion in terms of Torah was 
not the gradual petrifaction of the spiritual life that 
Christians have usually supposed it to be; and the notion 
that it was should be put away as one of the errors which 
have too long passed for history. 

If what has been said above is not sufficient, then this 
also is evidence bearing on thé same point, that practi- 
cally all of the Canonical Scriptures which are now known 
as the Old Testament were read and studied in the Syna- 
gogue. They were studied not merely, or rather not at 
all, for the sake of legal hair-splitting, but for the purpose 
of learning whatever they had to teach, whether for the 
practical conduct of life or for edification. It was the 
Sopherim who had most to do with the final collecting 
and arranging of those same Scriptures; a thing they. 
certainly would not have been careful to do if their own 
teaching stood condemned by the freer utterance of 
Isaiah and Amos. They believed themselves to be in 


102 THE PHARISEES 


the direct line of succession to the Prophets (b. B. Bath. 12* 
and Aboth i. 1); and if they did not speak in such 
trumpet tones, at least they made their hearers attend 
and take to heart what they said, to a degree which no 
prophet had ever succeeded in doing. If the Prophets 
could have done what Ezra did, there would have been 
no need of the sharp lesson of the Exile. 

The book of Psalms stands alone, not only in the Old 
Testament, but in the literature of the world. The 
collection of the various hymns in that book falls certainly 
within the period of the rise of the Synagogue, whatever 
may be the dates of the several pieces. Not only so, 
but certainly some and probably many Psalms were 
composed during that period. Psalm xix. and Psalm cxix. 
have already been mentioned above as especially Pharisaic 
in character. But all of them were part of the treasure 
of the Synagogue, and many, perhaps most, found a 
place in its services. They were not the hymns of poets 
of another race and language translated and incorporated 
into their service, like the Psalms as they appear in the 
Roman Catholic and Anglican Prayer Books. They were 
for Jews their own hymns in their own language; and 
though they have served to utter the devotion and 
aspiration, the praise and penitence of millions who have 
learned them through Christian use, they can say things 
for the Jewish soul in its worship which are hidden from 
the Christian, since no translation can exactly reproduce 
the elusive turns of expression of the original. 

I only refer to the Psalms here in order to use them 
as additional evidence bearing on the character of the 
Synagogue and of the worship offered there. If the 
influence of Ezra and the Sopherm had tended towards 
the petrifaction of religion, then it is strange that those 
teachers who were most directly responsible for applying 
the principles of Ezra should have taken the trouble to 
collect the Psalms, if they did not write them, and should 
have given them so prominent a place in the Synagogue 
service. This they most certainly did, whatever they 
may have done in regard to the Temple service. At the 


THE PHARISEES AND THE SYNAGOGUE 108 


time when the Synagogue was being brought into the 
form in which we know it first, the Psalms were fresh 
and new. They have never become stale from that day 
to this. And if they had been felt to be alien to the 
spirit of the Synagogue, out of keeping with its (sup- 
posed) barren legalism, then the Synagogue would have 
left the Psalms alone, as it afterwards left the Apocalyptic 
literature alone (see below, Chapter VII). Whatever may 
be the merits of that literature, its spirit was certainly 
alien to that of the Synagogue; and though its influence 
can be traced in the Talmud and the Midrashim, it is, 
_so far as I know, entirely absent from the liturgy. The 
Psalms were hymns of religion, felt to be fresh and living, 
and for that reason, and no other, the men who made 
the Synagogue and gave to its worship the means of 
utterance, turned to the Psalms to supply their need. 
The men who did this were those who followed the lead 
of Ezra; and of the Synagogue as it was in the time of 
Jesus and the first Christians, the House of Meeting, the 
place of worship, the school where all the lessons of the 
Torah were taught, by men who believed in it to all who 
could be helped to share in its blessing, and learned by 
those who found that blessing—of the Synagogue thus 
living and ministering to the higher life of the Jewish 
people, the Pharisees were the devoted friends, and theirs 
the animating spirit. 


CHAPTER V 
THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES—I 


In this and the following chapter I shall survey the 
religious and ethical teaching of the Pharisees; the 
answers which they gave to the various questions which 
present themselves to the thinkers and teachers of every 
religion, to all who ponder the. problems of life on its 
higher side. That field of inquiry and study is open to 
all, and what it contains is fundamentally the same for 
all; but between the several bodies of thought produced 
by that study there is wide diversity, both in the form 
in which the fundamentals are apprehended and the 
terms in which the resulting answers are expressed. 
Comparison of one body of teaching with others is pos- 
sible; but it is a mistake to try and force the concepts 
of one body of thought into the framework of another, 
and still more to condemn the mangled victim of such a 
process because it does not conform to a standard which 
it did not recognise and never attempted to reach. 
Pharisaic teaching deals with the same fundamental 
problems as those which form the subject of Christian 
teaching, but it approached them in a way and regarded 
them from a standpoint widely different from those of 
the Christian Church.t It will be my endeavour to set 
forth as clearly as I can, without partiality and without 
prejudice, the Pharisaic way and standpoint in regard to 
the treatment of theology and ethics, and to present 
the results at which they arrived. 

1 See an article by the present writer on ‘“‘ The Fundamentals 


of Religion as Interpreted by Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism,” 
in the Hibbert Journal for January 1923. 
104 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 105 


An exposition of Pharisaic theology must necessarily 
proceed on lines very different from those which would 
be appropriate to Christian theology. The contents of 
both are indeed much more akin than is usually recognised, 
and fundamentally they are only attempts to apprehend 
and express the same spiritual realities; but they differ 
in the terms which they use to describe those realities, 
in the conclusions which they drew from their premisses, 
and in the emphasis which they laid upon the several 
factors involved. Pharisaic theology may be said to fall 
under the two heads of Halachah and Haggadah; and 
if a division of Christian theology were made to corre- 


spond with the Pharisaic, it would have to be into moral » 


theology and doctrinal ‘theology. That would be, roughly 
speaking, correct as “regards the subject maiter; but it 
would be entirely wrong as regards the emphasis laid on 
the respective members of the twofold theology. In the 
Pharisaic theology, as in the Christian, there is one 
department where agreement is required, where the results 
laid down by authority must be accepted and where 
individual liberty is strictly controlled; and there is 
another department where, within wide limits, freedom 
is allowed, where acceptance of the declared teaching is 
not enforced, however much it may be desired, and where 
the individual has a considerable range of independence. 
But Pharisaic and Christian theology differ in this, that 
the one requires acceptance of what the other leaves free, 
and allows liberty where the other enforces obligation. 
The Halachah is indeed Law, though the Torah as a 
whole is not; and the Haggadah is the free expression 
of the Pharisaic mind, its meditation upon spiritual things. 
The same restriction of individual liberty which was 
imposed by the Halachah is enforced in the case of the 
Seen creed and the dogmatic theology based upon 

And the same liberty, to the extent that implicit 
Pe itice is not required, is found in regard to the 
Haggadah on the one side and moral theology on the 
other. Dogma is the Christian Halachah. And when, 
from the Christian side, the burden of the Law is con- 


106 THE PHARISEES 


trasted with the freedom under the Gospel, it would be 
well to bear in mind that the burden, if burden there 
be, is‘ only shifted, so to speak, from one shoulder to the 
other. If to require acceptance and to enforce it by 
strict discipline be good in the one case, it cannot be 
justly condemned in the other; and if the Pharisee is 
to be blamed for the Halachah, on what ground is the 
Christian to be praised for the Creed? Each can say to 
the other: ‘“ Physician, heal thyself!’’ The two cases 
are closely alike in substance though widely different in 
form. For the Halachah served as the chief bond to 
hold the Jewish community together, when every other 
bond of national life was broken, and Jews were scat- 
tered wide over the face of the earth. And whether the 
Christian Church, comprising men of many nationalities, 
could have been held together without the Creeds, is a 
question not to be hastily answered. The Church needed 
a bond of union quite as much as the Jewish community 
did. It could not, even if it had wished, have adopted 
the Halachah for this purpose. Indeed, it very speedily 
repudiated the Halachah, chiefly under the leadership of 
Paul; and the early controversy with the Jewish Chris- 
tians was the conflict of opinion between those who saw 
and those who did not see that the Halachah was 
impossible in a Church which was to consist almost wholly 
of Gentiles. | 

But the Church, when it had shaken off the Halachah, 
and said many hard things about it, very soon found 
itself in just the same difficulty as that which the Hala- 
chah had been employed to meet. Some bond was 
absolutely necessary to hold the Christian community 
together, as the Church increased in numbers and in the 
variety of its Gentile components. The result was the 
Creed, and in time the whole body of dogmatic theology. 
The Halachah was embodied in the Talmud, and was 
the subject of Rabbinical casuistry more often condemned 
than understood. The dogmatic theology of the Christian 
Church has been worked out to a degree of minute 
detail and subtle refinement fully equal, for good or 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 107 


for evil, to anything which the Rabbinical literature 
can show. | 

I leave the foregoing comparison without further elabo- 
ration and proceed to the more immediate subject of 
this chapter—the study of the teaching of the Pharisees 
so far as it found expression in the Halachah. 

To survey the whole field of the Halachah is out of 
the question, and would serve no useful purpose even if 
it were possible. But certain questions arise in this 
connection which ought to be answered if the student of 
Pharisaism is to understand the true meaning of what he 
Studies. More especially if he is a Christian student, 
not accustomed to the forms in which the Rabbis 
expressed their ideas, and not without some preconceived 
opinions about Pharisaism. Such questions are those of 
the intention and effect of the Halachah as a moral dis- 
cipline ; the function of conscience under the Halachah ; 
the Pharisaic theory of merit and reward; the relation 
of Halachah to the teaching of the Prophets; the rela- 
tion of Torah to the Moral Law. It is upon these ques- 
tions that criticism of the Pharisees is usually least 
favourable and also least instructed. The reason being 
that the Halachah is that factor in Pharisaism whose 
results are most conspicuous to the outsider, and whose 
inner meaning is usually hidden from him. I go on, 
therefore, to the study of the questions enumerated 
above. 


(A) The Halachah as a moral discipline.* 


Halachah has been defined above (Chapter III) as a 
rule of right conduct, or collectively as a body of such 
rules forming a coherent system. It was an opinion, 
carefully thought out and deliberately pronounced, that 
such-and-such was the right way of obeying the will of 
God in a given set of circumstances. It was a direction 
to the Jew showing him how the teaching of the Torah 

1 On the whole subject see an admirable essay by Lauterbach, 


The Ethics of the Halakah, reprinted from the Year Book of the 
Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1913. 


108 THE PHARISEES | 


was applicable to his particular case. Not that it was 
legislation’ merely ad hoc. It was a general rule laid 
down for the guidance of the whole community and of 
every member of it to whose case it might apply. And 
every member of the community was required to conform 
to it, or in the last resort he must cease to be recognised 
as a member of the community.! | 

To define Halachah was the task of the accredited 
teachers acting in consultation. No single teacher was 
competent to pronounce a binding decision by his own 
authority, however eminent he might be. It is true that 
a single teacher might declare that the halachah was 
so-and-so; but that would be merely his own opinion 
until it was confirmed by a majority of his colleagues. 
They might accept it on the ground of his learning; but 
unless it was accepted, it remained as his opinion, and 
had no binding force upon the community. 

Halachah was not regarded as “ judge-made law.” It 
was assumed that upon every question which might 
come up for discussion there must be a halachah, a 
right way of acting in those circumstances. The task 
of the Rabbis was to find out what that right way was. 
It might be ready to hand in an existing tradition or 
custom, or it might be inferred from some text of 
Scripture, or it might be deduced from some other 
halachah ; but it was found, not invented, and it only 
became halachah, binding on the community, when it 
was accepted and ratified by the vote of a majority of 
the teachers present in the Assembly. This was called 
fixing the halachah. Thus it is said in a famous passage 
(b. Erub. 13°) that the School of Shammai wished to 
fix the halachah according to their view, while the School 
of Hillel wished to fix it according to their (different) 
view. The controversy, it is said, lasted for three years, 
and was only ended when a Bath Qol (heavenly voice) 


1 Excommunication, ‘}1), was only applied in the case of 
teachers, at all events in Talmudic times. The two most famous 
cases were those of Akabjah b. Mahalalel, M. Edu. v. 6, 7, and 
R. Eliezer b. Horkenos, b, B. Metz. 59°. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 109 


declared that each of the opposing parties had the words 
of the living God, but that the halachah was according 
to the School of Hillel. And, on the same page, it is said 
that the two schools debated for two years over another 
question, and they took a vote and decided so-and-so. 

There is no reason to suppose that. any other method 
of fixing the halachah was ever employed at any period 
in Pharisaic and Rabbinic history. The halachah which 
was to bind the community was ascertained and declared 
by the united voice of the teachers most eminent for 
their wisdom and piety; and its acceptance by the com- 
munity was secured by their veneration of those teachers. 
No teacher, however eminent, could impose his opinion 
on the rest by sheer weight of authority. Even one so 
great as R. Eliezer b. Horkenos had to fight for his 
opinion by argument with his colleagues, and in the end 
he was out-voted, and even excommunicated because he 
would not conform (see the story in b. B. Metz. 59°). 
And of R. Meir, somewhat later, it is declared (b. Erub. 13") 
that, although there was no one like him in his generation, 
yet the halachah was not fixed in accordance with his 
opinion, so that no one should say that he had reached 
the bottom of R. Meir’s knowledge.! 

The Halachah, or rather the whole corpus of halachoth, 
formed the legislation for the community of those who 
sought to live according to the Torah. It covered the 
whole field of civil and criminal law, and also regulated 
social and individual actions of private life in a great 
variety of ways. It did not «mclude morality and reli- 
gion as separate departments, because it was all religious 
and all moral. The fundamental idea of the Halachah is 
that it teaches the right way of doing the will of God, 
and that there is no department of life in which there is 
not some opportunity, and therefore some obligation, of 


1 The meaning seems to be that R. Meir could give so many 
reasons for and against any given opinion, that one could not be 
certain what his own view really was. To declare the halachah 
according to the supposed meaning of R. Meir might be to pro- 
nounce a wrong decision after all. 


110 THE PHARISEES 


doing the will of God. This is the keynote of the whole 
Pharisaic conception of religion on its practical side, and 
between the Pharisees and the Talmudic Rabbis there is 
not the slightest difference of principle in this respect. 
By this fundamental principle Pharisaism stands or falls ; 
and it would need some courage, or some prejudice, to — 
say that the principle was bad. 

The Halachah was binding so long as it was not modi- 
fied; but it is important to know that it could be, and 
actually was, modified from time to time. It was never 
the cast-iron system which non-Jewish critics have 
usually supposed it to be, and so, misjudging it, have 
condemned it. The Halachah, fixed and declared by one 
Assembly, could be altered or repealed by another, if 
that other excelled the earlier one in numbers and 
wisdom. This is expressly declared in the Mishnah 


(Edu. i. 5),.and there is no doubt that this maxim was — 


sometimes acted on. The Halachah was never a rigid 
system, but always elastic, or, rather, plastic. It has 
been so from the days when Halachah was first formu- 
lated. As the Halachah in many instances modified and 
even annulled a Biblical precept in its literal sense, so 
the younger Halachah modified the older, in accordance 
with changes of opinion. And it was prevented from 
becoming a heavy burden by the wise provision that no 
Assembly might impose upon the community more than 
its members were able to bear (b. A. Zar. 36°). The 
reason of this was to safeguard the main object of the 
Halachah, viz. that the divine will should be done; since 
that object would be defeated if the community could 
not perform the prescribed actions except at the cost of 
hardship or privation.t ‘“‘ Serve the Lord with glad- 
ness’’ has been the motto of those who framed and 
administered the Halachah, and no less of those who 
lived under it. No doubt there have been some who 
found it a burden and chafed under it or broke away 
from it; but unless it had been substantially in accord 


t For the general theory of the binding force of the halachah, 
see Maimonides, Hilc. Mamrim, chaps. i and ii. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 111 


with the real purpose and aspiration of the community, 
it could not have endured, still less could it have acted 
as the strong bond and protection of the community, as 
it has done for two thousand years. The joy in the 
divine commandments which rings in Psalm cxix, a purely 
-Pharisaic psalm, as it were an Ode to the Halachah, has 
found an echo in Jewish hearts all down the centuries. 
It was said above that the Halachah as a system was 
plastic and not rigid, and this is a fact of which non- 
Jewish critics are seldom aware. It is usually represented 
as a mass of fixed and unchangeable rules, under which 
there could be no liberty and no progress, and of which 
the only result must be the stagnation or petrifaction of 
the religious life. But in reality it was not so; that 
result did not follow, and least of all did it follow from 
anything that the Pharisees did in the century before 
the rise of Christianity. The Pharisees and the Rabbis 
were, before anything else, teachers; and what they set 
out to teach was practical religion, the doing of right 
actions for the service of God and man. They sought 
to strengthen the factors which make for unity and peace 
amongst men—the sense of justice, truth, purity, brotherly 
love, sympathy, mercy, forbearance, and the rest—in a 
word, to raise the moral standard amongst their people 
from age to age. They had this purpose mainly in view 
when they developed the Halachah and kept it from 
becoming a rigid system. They made it a means of 
ethical training by defining right conduct in terms of a 
progressive morality, a standard which was raised and 
not lowered in course of time. The ethics of the Halachah 
is not identical with the ethics of the Old Testament, 
and the change from one to the other was deliberately 
made, even to the extent sometimes of annulling some 
precept laid down in Scripture. Thus, to take a famous 
instance, the old law, ‘‘an eye for an eye and a tooth 
for a tooth,” etc. (Exod. xxi. 24-5), was replaced by the 
enactment of a fine in money as the penalty for inflicting 
an injury (M.B. Kamma, viii. 1). The change, whenever 
it was made, is clear proof of the growth of a humaner 


“\ 


112 THE PHARISEES 


feeling since the original law was framed, and the Halachah 
marks that progress. It is quite unjust to charge against 
the Pharisees, or the Rabbis or the modern Jews, that their 
religion still maintains the old lex tahonts. That law has 
no more place in their religion than it has in Christianity, 
and it was discarded before ever Christianity appeared.? 
If the Pharisaic teachers had not been so intent as they 
were upon raising the ethical standard and embodying 
their higher teaching in the Halachah, they would not 
have toiled so untiringly as they did at the work of inter- 
pretation of Torah, and ever fresh interpretation. Their 
aim was not in the least to set forth the meaning as 
understood by its first readers or hearers. What they 
sought to discover was its meaning for their own time 
and their own needs ; what it might have to teach which 
would help them and the community to serve God more 
fully and faithfully, with greater wisdom, more enlightened 
conscience, and more devoted will, in the circumstances 
of their own time. This could not be settled and written 
down once for all; and only if it had been would that 
result have followed which is commonly charged as the 
main defect of Pharisaism, the reduction of religion and 
morality to a barren formalism. The Pharisees and 
the Rabbis were quite well aware of the danger, and they 
expressly guarded against it by refusing to make the 
Halachah a rigid system and by keeping it always open 


t The words in Matthew v. 38 are: ‘“‘ Ye have heard that it was 
said,” the reference being apparently to the text in Exodus, and 
not to anything being still taught. There is no evidence that the 
law ‘‘an eye for an eye,” etc., was ever literally enforced. If it 
was, then that could only have been done by the Sadducees who 
adhered to the literal sense of the Torah and rejected the Pharisaic 
interpretation. If the Sadducees still enforced the /ex talionis in its 
literal sense, the Pharisees certainly did not; and if even the Sad- 
ducees had abandoned the literal sense, the Pharisees would certainly 
not retain it. Now the Sadducean judicial code was abrogated in the 
reign of queen Alexandra (78-69 B.c.E.), and the event is noted in 
Meg. Taanith, 14 Tammuz. It is therefore clear that even if the lex 
laltonis had been literally enforced up till that time it then ceased, 
thus fully a century before the time of Jesus. It may have ceased 
long before, and it may never have been operative at all. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 118 


to revision and amendment, always subject to fresh 
consideration. That is why the whole of the Rabbinical 
literature included in the Talmud and the older Midrashim, 
especially of course the halachic Midrashim, is nothing 
but interpretation of Torah. The Rabbis wrote no treatises 
of theology, philosophy or ethics till long after the Tal- 
mudic period. And even when they did, the task of 
interpreting the Torah was not discarded. Practically 
the whole of their literature in Talmudic times is one 
enormous answer to the question, How shall God be 
truly served in this present world ? the world being what 
it is, and man being what he is, and God being what He is. 

The Halachah, then, was a system of law intended to 
direct and control action for a definite purpose. At any 
given time it was binding upon all members of the com- 
munity, the penalty for disobedience being public dis- 
approval, or, in the last resort, excommunication.' It 
was defined by the agreement of a majority of the accredited 
teachers in any given time and place, and it was accepted 
by the community on no other ground really than because 
the community trusted and revered its teachers, ‘It 
was always developed towards an ethical and not towards 
a ritual end, the object being not merely to prescribe 
certain acts to be done, but to teach men to serve God 
in doing those acts, and to foster the sense of human 
fellowship at the same time. It did restrict liberty of 
action to a very considerable extent, and it did this 
deliberately. By so doing, it served, and was intended 
to serve, as a means of holding the community together ; 
and further it provided actual practice in the doing of 
actions intended to be a service of God. The theory 
was expressed in the words of an often-repeated maxim: 
“Let a man always employ himself with Torah and 
Mitzvoth, even though it be not for its own sake ; because 
while doing it not for its own sake, he will learn to do it 
for its own sake’”’ (b. Pes. 50°). It was a bold theory, 
and perhaps it did not always produce the intended result. 
But the Halachah as a system is justified by the experience 

t But see above, p. 108. 


8 


114 THE PHARISEES 


of two thousand years, the experience of those who have 
lived under it. 

What was the effect of the Halachah upon the moral 
character of the individual and the community who 
accepted it as binding?1 The answer from the non- 
Jewish side lies ready to hand, and has been given at any 
time since the New Testament was written. It is that 
the effect of the Halachah (here called the Law) was to 
impose a constraint upon individual action which on the 
one hand weakened the sense of responsibility in a man 
for what he did, by substituting an outward authority 
for the inward prompting of his conscience, and on 
the other hand, crushed him under an increasing burden 
of obligation from which he could find no release unless 
he came under the influence of the Gospel. Further, 
that the effect of performing so many prescribed acts 
necessarily tended to develop hypocrisy in those who 
performed them, hypocrisy being the pretence of piety 
without the reality, the form without the substance, 
typified by the whited sepulchre, which is outwardly 
fair and inwardly loathsome. The whole answer, for a 
good many people still, is summed up in the single phrase : 
“Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ’’; and the question 
is dismissed as admitting of no other answer, considering 
who it was who uttered that deadly gibe. To those 
-Teaders who may be more open-minded, I offer some con- 
siderations which may put the matter in a different light 
and a truer perspective. 

First of all, it is to be observed that the Christian 
criticism of the Pharisees proceeds from men who were 
not Pharisees themselves, and, except at the beginning, 
were not Jews. Outside the New Testament it proceeds 
entirely from non-Jewish writers. Inside the New Testa- 
ment, while Jesus and his immediate followers were 


t See Montefiore’s Hibbert Lectures, IX, pp. 464 et seq., the most 
admirable and lucid treatment of the subject with which I am 
acquainted. It should be read again and again by those who want to 
know what the religion of the Pharisaic and Rabbinic Jews really 
meant to them. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 115 


certainly Jews, equally certainly they were not Pharisees.? 
Paul had been a Pharisee, but all his recorded utterances 
date from a time after he had broken with Pharisaism ; and 
it is common knowledge that a convert from one form of 
religious belief to another is not a reliable witness in 
regard to the system which he has left. The whole of 
the New Testament rests upon premisses, summed up 
in the supremacy of Christ, which render impossible an 
impartial conclusion from those premisses upon the merits 
or demerits of Pharisaism. 

Moreover, whatever weight may be attached to the 
evidence of the New Testament, it is evidence collected 
from a period of time very short in comparison with 
the two thousand years during which Pharisaism, in its 
own name and under its later name of Rabbinism, has 
lasted. Most people think of the Pharisees, so far as they 
think of them at all, as the opponents of Jesus, in his 
ministry, and as authors of his death; and they very 
naturally deem no condemnation too severe for the 
men who thwarted that ministry and helped to 
bring about that death. But, in the long history of 
Pharisaism, the public career and death of Jesus were 
hardly more than a passing incident, since the Pharisees 
naturally did not and could not estimate its importance 
from the Christian point of view. And as a matter of 
fact, the episode of Jesus and the rise of Christianity 
occupied but a very small place in the thought of the 


1 J cannot agree with the opinion of some Jewish scholars that 
Jesus was a Pharisee. It is perfectly true that much of his teaching 
is substantially what the Pharisees also taught. But Jesus did 
not teach from the basis of the Halachah, and by his declaration 
“But I say unto you”’ (Matt. v. 44) he virtually repudiated the 
principle of the Halachah. If he had been a Pharisee, why the 
sharp opposition between him and them? I do not think that 
any of the categories of contemporary Judaism are applicable to 
him. He was sui generis. But, if he were to be placed in any one 
of those categories, I should be inclined to regard him as an Am- 
ha-aretz. Klausner, in his remarkable book, “y12n 1w, goes to 
to the extreme length in stressing the agreement between Jesus 
and the Pharisees (see p. 343, and especially pp. 396-401). 


116 THE PHARISEES 


Pharisees, so far as their thought is expressed in their 
literature. To Christians this is no doubt surprising and 
deplorable. Yet how could it be otherwise, since the 
Pharisees were not Christians ? 

Whatever, then, may be the truth in regard to the 
charge of hypocrisy, a question with which I shall deal 
immediately, the charge, so far as it rests on the New 
Testament, is brought by hostile witnesses, in this sense 
that they applied to Pharisaism a standard widely different 
from its own, and were seldom able, or apparently inclined, 
to make any effort really to understand it. The opposi- 
tion was precisely in regard to the Halachah which the 
Pharisees maintained as the corner-stone, or rather the 
foundation walls and roof, of their system, and which the 
Christians definitely repudiated in favour of “the free- 
dom with which Christ had made them free ” (Gal. v. 1). 
There was sharp antagonism between the one side 
and the other; and a calm, dispassionate and accurate 
judgment of the one by the other is as little to be ex- 
pected and as seldom found as a calm, dispassionate 
and accurate judgment of the Roman Catholic Church 
by a Belfast Orangeman. 

Much that is relevant to the charges brought against 
Pharisaism, and in particular against the Halachah, is 
contained in the preceding chapters ; for, if what has there 
been stated is true, Pharisaism cannot have been the 
barren formalism and organised hypocrisy which its 
critics allege that it was. Nevertheless, in the hope of 
getting to the real truth in this matter, I will deal with 
the charge expressly, and endeavour to show why it 
was made and why it was plausibly made, and yet not 
necessarily with justice. 

First as to hypocrisy. The Halachah enjoined the 
performance of specified actions in a specified way. The 
intention was that men might thereby do the will of 
God exactly as He would have it done. For that result 
to be attained there must be along with the outward act 
the inward purpose. Without the inward purpose the 
outward act was worthless in a religious and moral sense. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 117 


The outward act alone was visible; the inward purpose 
was known only to God. It might, indeed, be discerned 
by the sympathetic insight of a friend; it could never 
be perceived by an indifferent or hostile observer. 

A system such as is here described is obviously one 
peculiarly liable to abuse, in that it exposes its adherents 
to the danger of formalism and hypocrisy to a much 
greater degree than a system which has no Halachah. 
The outward act can be performed, and all men see it ; 
. the inward intention may or may not be there, and even 
when it is there none can see it in the same way in which 
‘they see the outward act. There is, therefore, the con- 
stant danger that the outward act will be done without 
the inward intention. Now the Pharisees and the Rabbis 
were keenly alive to this danger, and perfectly aware that 
it was real and not imaginary. They knew that it was 
not always averted, that there were hypocrites in the 
community who pretended to be pious,and they denounced 
them with as much severity as can be found in the New 
Testament, and with a much closer acquaintance with 
the facts. The passage about the seven classes of false 
Pharisees (b. Sot. 22°) has been quoted ad nauseam 
and I will not repeat it. Less familiar is the passage, on 
the same page, which gives the advice of King Jannai 
(see above, Chapter II) to his wife when he was dying: 
“Be not afraid of the Pharisees, nor of those who are 
not Pharisees, but of them that are dyed to look like 
Pharisees ; for their deeds are as the deed of Zimri, and 
they seek the reward of Phineas.’’ King Jannai was 
a Sadducee, but at least he could distinguish a genuine 
Pharisee from a false one. That his words were approved 
by the Pharisees themselves is shown not merely by their 
inclusion in the Talmud, but by the fact that they are 
quoted in the immediate context of the seven classes of 
false Pharisees, and the maxim about engaging in Torah 
and Mitzvoth for its own sake. Thus explicitly did the 
Pharisees recognise the danger to which the Halachah 
exposed its adherents, and thus severely did they denounce 
those who were false to their principles. Nevertheless, 


118 THE PHARISEES 


they steadfastly maintained the Halachah, believing it 
to be indeed the right way of serving God, and not less 
right for being difficult and dangerous. But that on the 
whole the difficulty was faced and the danger sufficiently 
guarded against, is shown by the fact that the Jewish 
community has lived under the Halachah and by means 
of the Halachah for two thousand years. No community 
of hypocrites could do that. 

The Halachah, then, involved the danger of hypocrisy, 
but it did not necessarily or in general produce hypo- 
crites. Some there certainly were; but in regard to 
others it must be remembered that the charge was brought 
on the ground of the performance of outward acts, of 
which the inward purpose and meaning was not and could 
not be seen by the jonlooker. A Gentile, observing that 
a Jew did many things, in themselves apparently trivial, 
in a particular way and as a religious duty, would have 
no clue in his own religious experience to explain why 
the Jew did these things. He could not read the inner 
intention even when it was really there, and he had nothing 
to go upon except what he saw. It is obvious that he 
might easily put a quite wrong interpretation on what 
he saw, and declare that the Jew was a hypocrite when 
in reality he was perfectly genuine and sincere. And such 
outward observation alone is all that was possible to 
those who have maintained most persistently the charge 
of hypocrisy against the Pharisees. 

Further, it is a matter of universal experience that in 
the case of every religion there are some who take it 
seriously and some who take it lightly, some who are 
conscious of its inner meaning and some who care only 
for the outward form. This is quite as true of Christi- 
anity as it is of Pharisaism. The results are different 
in appearance only because in Pharisaism definite action 
was required, which could be seen, while in Christianity 
definite belief was required which could not be seen. 
By the nature of the case no statistics are possible on 
which the question could be decided. In the absence 
of such means of proof, it seems to me reasonable to 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 119 


hold that the proportion of hypocrites to sincere members 
of the community was not greater amongst the Pharisees 
than amongst Christians ; while the former were exposed 
to the charge by the very form of their religious system 
to a far greater extent than the adherents of any form 
of Christianity. 

Next, as to the alleged effect of the Halachah in weakening 
the sense of moral responsibility in those who were bound 
by it, the contrast being between the external authority 
of the Halachah and the internal authority of the indi- 
vidual conscience. It is difficult for one who is not a Jew 
‘and who has had no experience of life under the Halachah 
to answer this question in such a manner as to carry con- 
viction that his answer is right. I can only say how the 
problem appears to me, and leave the reader to judge 
whether the solution I offer is reasonable. 

In the first place, a considerable effort of moral deter- 
mination was needed if a man was to accept the system 
of Halachah at all. The difference between an Am-ha- 
aretz and a Pharisee (or one who followed the lead of the 
Pharisees) was mainly this, that the former disregarded 
the Halachah and the latter obeyed it. Such disregard 
might amount to complete carelessness of any restraint 
on the side of morality and religion, or it might be any- 
thing up to almost complete acceptance of the Pharisaic 
position. There was nothing to compel anyone to accept 
that position, and no one would accept it unless he took 
his religion very seriously. If he did accept it, he did 
so because he desired to serve God, and he believed that 
the Halachah would help him to do this. That was 
precisely what the Halachah was for. It was a moral 
and religious discipline, and he voluntarily put himself 
under that discipline, or remained in it having been 
brought up under its influence. It is perfectly true that 
the Halachah told him to do this and that and the other, 
and in this sense an external command was laid upon 
him; whereas one who was not under the Halachah 
would be guided by his own conscience whether he should 
do that or something else or nothing at all. Yet the 


120 THE PHARISEES 


obedience given to the Halachah was not a blind obedience, 
given merely to the letter of a law without regard to 
the intention with which it was fulfilled. The Halachah, 
ex hypothesi, was the defined will of God, and in obeying 
its precepts he had not truly served God unless he intended 
his act as a deed done for God. Merely to do the act 
without the intention of serving God in it was worthless, 
and even sinful. ‘“‘ Greater is the transgression (of a 
precept) with the intention of serving God than to fulfil 
one without that intention,’’ was the bold declaration of 
a Rabbi (b. Nazir, 23°); and, whatever may be thought 
of the validity of that maxim, it does not leave much room 
for moral indifference. 

In the case of a man not under the Halachah, but follow- 
ing the guidance of his own conscience, does he or does 
he not obey an external authority ? Apart from theories 
as to the function and meaning of conscience, the religious 
man believes that the authority which he owns in con- 
science is, in the last resort, the authority of God. It 
is certainly not his own. In obedience to his conscience 
he does various things which are difficult or dangerous, 
or in some way contrary to his inclination, and in doing 
them he yields to the authority of One higher than himself, 
whose right to command he owns. He recognises the 
intimations of that authority by the inward vision of his 
mind, known as conscience. 

In the case of a man under the Halachah,' tiers iS 
certainly an external authority, but here again it is the 
authority of God. It is not merely the authority of a book 
of rules or a code of laws enforced by social sanction, 
or a court of justice. It may be argued that the 
Halachah was, and could only be, an imperfect expression 
of the will of God. That is as it may be. But, given the 


t The Halachah does not cover all the ethical teaching of the 
Pharisees. It is the development of the preceptive side of the 
Torah, but it does not include the moral and religious duties which 
were left undefined, ‘‘ committed to the heart” (b. B. Metzia, 58"). 
These fall under the head of aeeeday They will be dealt with in 
the next chapter. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 121 


fundamental conviction that the Halachah really was the 
defined will of God—and that conviction was of the very 
essence of Pharisaism—then the difference is but small 
‘between the one way of obeying the divine will and the 
other, and is a difference more of form than of substance. 
There is a difference in the way in which the inward 
energy of the soul is directed to right action, but there 
is no necessary difference in the amount of the energy so 
directed. In other words, the individual responsibility 
of the Pharisee under the Halachah was not weakened, 
but it expressed itself in a different manner. 

- It must be further borne in mind that ‘individual respon- 
sibility,’ for the Pharisee, included his responsibility as a 
member of the community. When he was faced with the 
question, What is my duty under these present circum- 
stances ? he would feel that the answer depended not 
only on the fact that he was personally and directly 
accountable to God as an isolated human being in the 
presence of his Maker, but also on the fact that he was 
one of a community whose ideals of service he shared 
and whom he could either help or hinder in pursuing 
those ideals. If there was present to his mind some 
indication of duty defined on behalf of the community 
by its accredited teachers, and accepted as being a true 
declaration of the will of God, then, being himself a mem- 
ber of the community, his sense of responsibility would 
incline him towards the particular action defined for 
the particular circumstances in which he found himself. 
And, unless for any reason his sense of communal fellow- 
ship were weakened, he would not naturally feel’ any 
opposition between the intimation of his own conscience 
and the injunction of the Halachah. So far as I have 
observed, no case of such opposition is to be found in 
the Rabbinical literature, and I do not remember that the 
problem is ever discussed. If I am reminded! of the 


t This very point was raised against me by a Jew, one of my 
hearers when I lectured at The Hague on “ The Pharisaic Point of 
View.” I met it in the way set forth below, and another Jew, who 
_ took part in the discussion, agreed with me. 


122 THE PHARISEES 


famous case of R. Jehoshua, b. Hananjah and R*. Gamliel 
(b. R. ha. Sh. 257), I claim that as a support of my con-_ 
tention ; because R. Jehoshua decided his course of action 
precisely on the ground that he was a member of the 
community, and not an isolated individual. Certainly, 
he thought that R*. Gamliel was mistaken in the view 
which he expressed; but if, in yielding against his own 
judgment, he had also yielded against his own conscience, 
he would have felt the pang of remorse as everyone does 
who disobeys his conscience ; and there is no indication 
that R. Jehoshua ever suffered remorse for what he had 
done. In other words, the conflict of conscience with 
Halachah did not arise in the case at all. Where alone 
it would arise would be in the case of men whose alle- 
giance to the system of Halachah was weakened or loosened, 
as, for instance, by inclination towards the Christian 
system, and who could no longer, with entire conviction, 
regard the Halachah as the defined will of God. The 
experience of Paul is a case in point. 

I hold, therefore, that the effect of the Halachah was 
not to weaken the sense of individual responsibility in 
those who ordered their lives by its guidance, nor was it 
to blunt their moral sensibility. The most that can 
be truly said is that both individual responsibility and 
moral sensibility showed themselves in ways different 
from the ways which are to be expected under a non- 
halachic system. I only add that the Halachah itself 
was developed and elaborated as an ethical and not as a 
ritual system. It was always the endeavour of those 
who built it up to find an ethical meaning in the various 
precepts and make. even the most unpromising material 
serve the purpose of a moral discipline.? 

Finally, there is the fact that no branch of study has — 
been more zealously pursued by Jews in all ages than — 
ethics, as is shown by innumerable examples, from the 


t The reader is referred again to Lauterbach’s essay on The 
Ethics of the Halakah, the very title of which is as suggestive 
as the contents are illuminating. To illustrate the point fully 
would be simply to quote the whole essay. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 123 


Pirké Abdth at one end to the Ethics of Judaism by 
Lazarus at the other. Even Spinoza, though he went 
far from the traditional ways of thought of his people, 
bore witness to his ancestry by making ethics the subject 
of his greatest work. If the influence of the Halachah 
had been to weaken, let alone to paralyse, the moral 
sense of the Jew who lived under it, such age-long devotion 
to ethical study would be impossible, because self-contra- 
dictory. A comparison between Jew and Gentile, or 
Jew and Christian, in respect of morality would show 
that there was at least as much substantial virtue on the 
Jéwish side as on the other. If this was due to the Hala- 
chah, then its influence as a moral discipline was bene- 
ficial, And if it was not due to the Halachah, then the 
influence of that system was not injurious to morality. 
Whatever the Gentile may think, the Pharisees and the 
Rabbis knew what they were about when they elaborated 
the Halachah, and made it the chief means for the moral 
training of their people. Two thousand years of experience 
may provide the answer to the question whether their labour 
was in vain. 


(B) Merit and Reward. 


It is beyond question that a great deal of the ethical 
teaching of the Pharisees turns upon the ideas of ‘ merit ’ 


1 The reader should consult the essay of Marmorstein on The 
Docirine of Merits in the Old Rabbinical Literature, which forms 
No. 7 of the Jews’ College publications. Dr. Marmorstein has 
ransacked the Haggadic literature and given an immense collection 
of illustrative passages. I am not convinced that the theory which 
he maintains, of distinct views held by separate schools amongst 
the Rabbis, is well founded; but this does not detract from the 
value of the work as a thesaurus of information. A non-Jewish 
reader would perhaps feel, as I have felt, the want of a fuller dis- 
cussion of first principles. For want of such guidance, I have had 
to do the best I could to get to the root of the matter, and to find 
an explanation of what seems to me to be the real difficulty. To 
a Jew I should imagine that the difficulty does not exist, because 
the doctrine of merit and reward is the natural outcome of the 
theory of Halachah. It has taken me long to understand what, 
after all, is very simple. That is, if I have understood it. 


124 THE PHARISEES 


and ‘reward,’ and thus provides the basis for the charge 
of self-righteousness so often brought against them. 
And while it is perfectly true that most of the relevant 
passages which may be quoted are the utterance of indi- 
vidual teachers, expressing only their own opinion, yet 
they are in harmony with the general Pharisaic view, 
otherwise they would not be included in the Talmud and 
the Midrashim. It is not the fact that every Pharisee 
believed, still less that he was required to believe, that 
God kept a ledger account of merits and sins for every 
individual Jew, and apportioned reward or punishment 
accordingly. R. Akiba made use of a very similar figure 
of speech on one occasion, and it was included as a striking 
utterance in the ethical anthology known as Pirke Aboth 
(iii. 16). The figure of speech was his own; the meaning 
‘of it, for which a better figure might have been chosen, 
was what every Pharisee would endorse. All the utterances 
of individual teachers about merit and reward are the 
varied expression of a few ground principles, fundamental 
conceptions, inherent in Pharisaism itself. I shall try 
to show what those fundamental conceptions were, and 
how the Pharisaic system, more particularly the Halachah, © 
necessarily produced a theory of merit and reward. Of 
course these words have a disagreeable sound when used 
in connection with acts done in the service of God. ‘“ Doth 
Job serve God for nought ?’”’ was the question of the 
Satan in the poem. And it might well be that the same 
question should be asked concerning the Pharisees, who 
certainly did believe that a man could acquire merit 
by serving God, and certainly did hope for a reward 
as the result of so doing. But, however it may have been 
with Job, the case of the Pharisees is not disposed of until 
it is seen why they came to use these words in connection 
with the service of God, and what they meant by them. 
The Pharisaic doctrine ! of merit and reward is, like 


x J use the word ‘“‘ doctrine’’ for convenience, to denote the 
general way of regarding the subject. There was never any clearly 
defined statement of that general way, which could be regarded 
as the authorised and accepted Pharisaic teaching. See above, 
Chapter III, on Haggadah. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 125 


nearly everything else in their system, a development 
of what is found in the Old Testament. The idea of reward 
appears in the Decalogue, attached to the Fourth Com- 
mandment. Deuteronomy is full of it, expressed in the 
oft-repeated phrases: ‘‘ That it may be well with thee,” 
“That thou mayest prolong thy days,’’ etc. The inten- 
tion obviously was to induce observance of what was 
commanded by the promise of substantial benefit; in 
short ‘reward’ in the plain meaning of the term. More- 
over, in the Old Testament there was no hesitation in 
describing the reward in terms of material welfare, nor 
In associating prosperity with virtue, and misfortune with 
sin. The chief moral problem which finds a place in the 
Old Testament is that presented by the occasional failure 
of this theory, as in the ease of Job, and the Servant of 
the Lord (Isa. lit). 

The idea of ‘merit’ is far less prominent in the Old 
Testament than that of ‘reward,’ if indeed it can be 
found there at all. The word ‘zachith,’ mys, which 
is constantly used in the Rabbinical literature, does not 
occur in the Old Testament ; and the verb from which 
it is derived, though it is found in the Old Testament. 
has not there its later Pharisaic meaning. It may be .- 
- said, therefore, I believe with substantial truth, that the 
doctrine of ‘merit’ is mainly due to the Pharisees, and 
that while they inherited the idea of ‘reward,’ they 
developed it along lines of their own towards a conclusion 
very different from that reached in the Old Testament. 
Whatever they meant by ‘reward,’ a question which 
will be considered presently, they did not identify it with 
merely material prosperity. 

The Pharisaic doctrine of reward and merit is a con- 
clusion drawn from three fundamental convictions, axioms 
of their religious belief: first, that God is just ; second, 
that there is an intrinsic difference between doing right 
and doing wrong; third, that the whole duty of man is 
to do the will of God. These are axioms of Judaism in 
general, and not peculiar to the Pharisees. What is 
distinctive of them is that they developed those axioms, 


126 THE PHARISEES 


especially the last one, in terms of Torah. Upon the 
first two little needs to be said. That God is just, per- 
fectly righteous, is the final word of Judaism in regard 
to human apprehension of the divine nature. Jews 
believe strongly in the love of God, and have much to 
say about it; but they.do not regard love as being the 
highest attribute of God discernible by man. After 
all, perhaps the difference is only in the form of expression, 
and the divine righteousness and the divine love may 
be in reality one and not two. No less fundamental 
in Judaism, of whatever type, is the distinction between 
right and wrong, as a moral and not merely a prudential 
or utilitarian distinction. It was the perception of this 
moral distinction as an integral element of belief in God 
which marked the divergence of the old Hebrew religion 
from that of ‘‘ the peoples round about’”’; and mainly 
by insisting on the close connection between religion 
and morality did Judaism rise to the great height which 
it attained. This was the constant theme of the Prophets, 
and the no less constant theme of the Pharisees and the 
Rabbis. Moreover, the distinction between right and 
wrong was no mere theoretical opinion, but the basis 
of a practical demand. It was to be acknowledged in 
act, by the doing of right and the refraining from wrong. 
Not otherwise could God be owned as God, let alone 
served. ‘‘ Ye shall be holy, for I am holy ” (Lev. xix. 2) 
has been in all ages since its utterance one of the watch- 
words of Judaism. This is really the third axiom men- 
tioned above—that the highest duty of man is to do the 
will of God. 

These three axioms. express the essence of Judaism, 
as a religion which places before everything else the 
doing of the will of God because He wills the right and 
abhors the wrong, being in Himself perfectly righteous, 
just, holy and good. There is much else in Judaism 
besides what is here indicated, but there is nothing more 
fundamental. Christianity, no doubt, has always believed 
in a righteous and holy God, has always insisted on the 
distinction between right and wrong and has always 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 127 


taught the duty of doing His will; but Christianity, 
as expressed in the teaching of the Church, has not 
put these before everything else. The first place has 
always been given to right belief.1 If the Church 
had dealt with sinners as she dealt with heretics, her 
history would have been very different from what it 
has been. 

Upon these three axioms the whole structure of Judaism 
rests; and one part of that structure is the doctrine or 
theory or general conception of merit and reward, which 
must now be more closely examined. If God is righteous, 
then He cannot be indifferent to the distinction between 
right and wrong. That is no arbitrary human distinction, 
but one inherent in the ultimate reality, in the very nature 
of God. Not that there is evil in God, but that the Good 
is what He is and evil is the contradiction of it. The 
distinction between them is contained in the idea of God, 
as the presence of both to the apprehension of man is 
within the scope of his creative action. “I make peace 
and create evil. I am the Lord which doeth all these 
things’ (Isa. xlv. 7). 

When this distinction is expressed in conduct, there 
arises the distinction between the righteous and the 
sinner. And the conclusion follows that because God 
is just He will not treat the righteous and the sinner 
in the same way. There must be some difference between 
the condition of the man who does right and that of the 
man who does wrong. In some way it is better with the 
former than with the latter; and not only is better, 
but must be better, through the justice of God. In what 
way it is better is another question, variously answered ; 
but of the fact of a divinely appointed difference between 
the condition of the righteous and the condition of the 
sinner there has never been any doubt in Judaism. It 
is, indeed, confirmed by general human experience, 
wherever that experience includes the recognition of the 
conceptions, goodness and sin. 

Now this fact of a divinely appointed difference between 

t See below, Chapter IX, p. 231. 


128 THE PHARISEES 


the condition of the righteous and that of the sinner, 
is what the doctrine of ‘reward’ in any of its forms 
sought to express. The reward was ultimately that 
better condition, whatever it might be; and the worse 
condition was the negative of the reward—the punish- 
ment or retribution—or in whatever way it might be 
conceived. 

It is only natural that this ‘ better condition’ should 
be described in various ways, ranging from the grossest 
material prosperity to the purest spiritual bliss. That 
was but the result of the slow process of moral develop- 
ment in the Jewish people. The most obvious method is 
to connect the difference between the ‘ better’ and the 
‘worse’ condition with the difference between prosperity 
and adversity. So it is found in numberless passages 
of the Old Testament ; and it may be called a first rough 
approximation to a true explanation of the meaning and 
nature of the ‘ better condition.’ Even in the Old Testa- 
ment this explanation was challenged, as in the Book of 
Job; but the fact remained for which the explanation 
was sought. 

The development of Pharisaic and Rabbinical thought 
was towards a higher and more spiritual conception of 
the ‘ better condition.’ The old idea of material pros- 
perity was never indeed abandoned, but other concep- 
tions were brought in beside it, with no attempt at con- 
sistency, but just as each individual teacher thought that 
he could best represent it. And perhaps the highest 
point was reached by Kab, in his great saying that in the 
world to come “ there is neither eating nor drinking, but 
the righteous . . . enjoy the radiance of the Shechinah ”’ 
(b. Ber. 17*; and cf. Matt. xxii. 30, for a very similar 
utterance of Jesus). That the Rabbis could rise high 
above the old materialist conception is shown by the 
great saying of Ben Azai (Aboth iv. 2): ‘‘ The reward of a 
mitzvah is a mitzvah ; and the reward of a sin is a sin’”’; 
a ‘mitzvah’ being an opportunity of serving God by 
fulfilling a precept. In these and many other sayings 
which might be quoted, the Rabbis used the term‘ reward ’ 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES § 129 


without hesitation, and they used it always! to denote 
the ‘ better condition,’ which was, through the justice of 
God, the certain accompaniment or result or consequence 
of doing right. That was the meaning of ‘reward’ i 
the thought of the Rabbis. They did not teach that a 
man could, still less that he should, make a bargain with 
God and stipulate that for such-and-such a service he 
should be paid so much. Possibly some teacher amongst 
the many hundreds whose words are recorded in the 
Rabbinical literature may have used such language; 
but it certainly was not habitual. It is emphatically 
contradicted by the famous saying of Antigonos of Socho, 
an early Pharisaic teacher, quoted in Aboth i. 3: “ Be 
not ‘like servants who serve their master on condition 
of receiving a present’’; where the word for ‘ present ’ 
is different from the usual word for ‘ reward.’ 

Such being the real meaning of ‘ reward’ as understood 
by the Pharisees and the Rabbis, it is evident that those 
who based their actions on such a conception cannot 
fairly be condemned as mere traffickers,’ serving God 
for what they could gain by doing so. If there is a“ better 
condition,’ divine blessing in some form, for those who 
serve God the best they know, then on what ground is 
it to be thought wrong if a man hopes to please God 
by what he does, if he hopes that he may in some way 
be made aware of the approval of God? Is it wrong 
to hope for the blessing of God? When it was said in 
the parable (Matt. xxv. 21): ‘‘ Well done, good and faithful 
servant ... enter thou into the joy of thy Lord,” will 
any Christian say that it is wrong to hope that such a 
greeting might be given to him? Yet a Pharisee would 


_  ¥ The ‘reward’ of a sin, in Ben Azai’s saying, is indeed not a 
“better condition’; but, alike in regard to precept and sin,.it is 
the justice and even the goodness of God which determines the 
subsequent condition of the man who does the one or the other. 
And if it is the justice of God which appoints for a sinner such 
weakened will that he more easily sins, still it is ‘ better’ for 
the sinner to be so dealt with than if his sin were passed over. It 
is the mercy of God which ‘‘ renders to every man according to his 
deeds ’’ (Ps, lxii. 11). 
9 


130 THE PHARISEES 


have said, “‘ that is exactly what I mean by ‘ reward.’ ” 
And it was not a Pharisee who used the words. Moreover, 
Jesus in several of his sayings used the word ‘ reward ’ 


apparently with as little hesitation as the Pharisees ~ 


did; and Christian readers have often felt uneasy when 
they have read ‘‘ Thy Heavenly Father shall recompense 
thee’ (Matt. vi. 4), “Great is your reward in heaven” 
(ibid, v. 12), ‘‘ He shall in no wise lose his reward” (1bid. 
x. 42). Is such teaching on a low moral plane? [If it 
is not, then that is because Jesus and the Pharisees meant 
precisely the same thing when they used the term ‘ reward.’ 
He and they made it the essential of their respective 
teaching to do the will of God, whatever be the difference 
between their respective conceptions of the will of God. 
And he; no less than they, recognised that there was a 
‘better condition’ for the man who did the will of God 
than for the man who did not do it. | 

Before leaving the subject of ‘reward,’ it should be 
noted that the tendency of Rabbinical teaching was to 
defer the actual reward, whatever it might be, to the 
future life. No one knows what form the reward will 
take, if it have any form at all beyond the inward peace 
of the divine approval. And R. Eliezer the Great warned 
against serving God for the sake of what could be gained 
by doing so, when he explained the text (Ps. cxii. 1): 
*“‘ Blessed is the man who delighteth greatly in his com- 
mandments ”’ to mean “ delighteth in his commandments, 
but not in the reward attached to them” (b. A, Zar. 19%). 
The Pharisees were quite aware of the abuse to which 
their theory of ‘reward’ was liable, and they sought to 
guard against that abuse; but they held to their funda- 
mental conception of the ‘better condition’ through 
the justice of God, because they were convinced of its 
truth. And true it surely is, though it be hard to find 
the exactly fitting words in which to set forth the truth. 

So much for ‘reward’; now for ‘merit.’ This is, 
as shown above, a conception more distinctive of Phari- 
saism than that of ‘reward.’ To understand what the 
Pharisees meant by ‘ merit,’ we must go back to the three 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 181 


fundamental axioms explained above. If a man, in 
any given set of circumstances, does the will of God, he 
is obviously more pleasing to God that if he disobeyed 
or did nothing. This must be so if God be just, and if 
He desires that His will may be done. When, therefore, 
an opportunity comes to a man of doing the divine will, 
there an opportunity is given of serving God, of becoming 
more pleasing in His sight. By performing the act in 
question he has done something for God; and while 
what he has:done may make no difference to God, who 
does not need what man does for Him, it makes this 
differenceto the man, that he has in thatinstance definitely 
exerted his will, acted out of himself, on the side of God. 
If that opportunity of service had not presented itself, 
he would have been by so much the less effective in his 
service of God than he became by doing the duty. Now 
God has made known what is His will, in such-and-such 
circumstances. On Pharisaic lines the Halachah is the 
defined statement of the divine will. It gives directions 
how the several ‘ mitzvoth,’ precepts, are to be performed. 
When an occasion arises in which a ‘ mitzvah’ can be 
performed, three courses are open to a man: either 
he can obey it, or he can remain neutral doing nothing, 
or he can disobey it. If the neutrality line be taken as 
the basis of the argument, then the man who obeys the 
divine will by performing the mitzvah, rises above that 
line, while the man who disobeys sinks below it. The 
position of the man who rises above the neutrality line 
is what is meant by ‘ merit’ in the Pharisaic theory. 
What is here described under the figure of a change 
of position does correspond to something real. The 
doing of an act of service to God does make a difference 
to the character of the man who has done it—adds some- 
thing to his character which was not there before. That 
‘something added’ is the ‘merit’ acquired by doing 
the act. Of the fact, in any given case, that the act 
was done, there could be no question, it spoke for itself. 
The Pharisees accordingly accepted the ‘something 
added’ as a psychological fact, and made full use of it. 


132 THE PHARISEES 


Whether the word ‘merit’ is the best rendering of 
‘zachuth’ is perhaps open to question, though I am 
not able to suggest a better. But the word ‘ merit’ 
tends to obscure a fine distinction which the Pharisees 
drew, and which relieves their theory of merit from what 
has been felt to be objectionable in it. 

Suppose a man does some act of service to God, per- 
forms a ‘ mitzvah,’ or does a work of charity or the like. 
It may have cost him some effort of self-sacrifice, or — 
even suffering or hardship. He did it by the help of 
God in whom he trusted and to whom he prayed. In 
the act so done there are two factors, the will of the man 
expressing itself in the act, and the help of God which 
enabled the act to be done. Now zachuth, ‘ merit,’ 
applies to the first factor and not to be second. The 
Pharisee would put the case to himself thus: “I have 
done this act, and thereby I stand higher than I did 
before ; but it was God who made me able to do it, and 
I do not claim for myself what is His alone.’’ The Pharisee 
did not say: ‘‘See how good I am”’; he did not mean 
that at all when he believed that he had acquired merit. 
He meant that a change had been effected in his position 
as a moral being; that was an objective fact of which he 
could be aware as he could of any other fact. But he 
knew quite well that it was the help of God which had 
made his act possible. The use of the word ‘ merit’ to 
include both these factors, turns what is entirely harmless 
into what is morally objectionable. | 

This subtle distinction, though it is nowhere, so far 
as I know, expressly drawn, was evidently recognised 
because it explains how it was that a Pharisee, or a Rabbi, 
could be quite aware that he had done such-and-such 
acts of service to God and yet could be humble in mind. — 
There is hardly any virtue upon which more stress is laid 
in the Rabbinical ethics than humility; and what is 
more, their literature, a most honest disclosure of the 
Pharisaic mind, does not indicate that self-righteousness — 
was their special fault. Of course, the theory of ‘ merit ° 
exposed the Pharisee to the danger of self-righteousness, 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 188 


just as the theory of the Halachah exposed him to the 
_ danger of hypocrisy; and I am not going to say that 
the danger was always avoided. But in the one case 
as in the other, the theory was perfectly clear and sound, 
and the practical working of it did not, on the whole, 
lead to the deplorable results which non-Jewish critics 
have usually ascribed to it. After all, the Pharisee knew 
what he was about much better than his non-Jewish critics 
have usually known. 

Both ‘merit’ and ‘reward’ were consequent upon 
the doing of an act of service to God, ‘ merit’ being the 
“something added’ and ‘ reward’ the ‘ better condition.’ 
And both conceptions were the inevitable products of 
a system which placed actual doing of the will of God 
before everything else. The Pharisee stated his theory 
of ‘ merit’ and ‘ reward’ in terms of Torah, by teaching 
that a man could acquire ‘merit’ by performing the 

‘mitzvéth’ and might justly hope for a ‘reward’ for 
doing so. The whole intention of the theory was summed 
up in a famous saying: ‘“‘ The Holy One, blessed be He, 
was pleased to make Israel able to acquire merit ; where- 
fore He gave them much Torah and many mitzvoth.” 
Those who are in the habit of talking about the burden 
of the Law and of imagining the Jews as helpless captives 
in its iron fetters, would do well to study the meaning 
of this saying, for it expresses .ruly, as the other never 
did, the way in which the Pharisee looked upon Torah 
and mitzvoth, and thanked God for both. 

After what has been said in explanation of the term 
“merit ’’ as understood by the Pharisees, it will be easy 
to understand their further development of the idea in 
the conception of vicarious merit, and especially the 
merit of the Fathers. Merit being taken to be a psycho- 
logical fact, and not a boastful assertion of pérsonal ex- 
cellence, it was held that the merit of one who had much 


1 The saying is found in M. Macc. iii. 16, and its author was 
R. Hananjah b. Akashia, of whom nothing is known. The saying 
is usually printed in the editions of Pirke Aboth at the end of each 
chapter. 


1384 THE PHARISEES 


could be available for those who had little or none. There 
were two reasons which led to this further development, 
both arising out of the fact that Israel was a community 
whose members had a certain responsibility for each 
other. One reason was that one member who had 
much merit could by imparting it help his brethren who 
had less. And the other was the consideration that since 
the community had often, in spite of its sins and failures, 
been delivered from danger, and in various ways received 
the blessing of God, this must have been due to the merit 
of the holiest and best among them. The merit was 
there, and it was there not to be wasted but to effect 
some good under the providence of God. Rabbinical 
speculation spent much time in dwelling on the connection 
between the merit of the faithful and the blessings which 
had been received. The connection traced is often 
fantastic, as no doubt the teacher was quite well aware ; 
but what he taught was the solidarity of Israel, the truth 
that ‘“‘no man liveth to himself alone,’ and that Jews 
are members one of another. He taught that-everyone, 
by his own faithful service of God, could thereby also 
serve his fellow-man; and that one who had little or no 
merit of his own could think gratefully of those who had, 
by faithful lives, done much for him, That was the real 
outcome of the doctrine of imputed merit, a lesson of mutual 
service and brotherly love, and not at all a mere calcula- 
tion of self-righteousness. He who pleads his own merits 
before God is answered for the merits of others; and he 
who pleads the merits of others is answered for his own 
(see b. Ber. 10°, and Marmorstein, pp. 17-18). In this 
saying, and many others, the necessary warning was 
given against the danger of relying on the merits of others 
as an excuse for one’s own slackness. Here, as else- 
where, the Pharisaic theory is exposed to moral dangers, 
and made severe demands upon the men who lived under 
that system. But the dangers were pointed out and 
carefully guarded against; and, whatever might have 
been expected from an a priori view of the theory, in 
* For details see Marmorstein’s essay, passim. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 135 


practice it met the needs of men who took both their 
religion and their morality in deadly earnest, and were 
not afraid to serve God in the perilous way which they 
believed He had shown to them. 


(C) The Relation of Pharisaism to the Teaching of the 
Prophets. 


The contrast between the Prophets and the Pharisees 
in their manner of teaching has often been pointed out. 
It is indeed obvious, even to the most casual reader. The 
Prophet delivered his message freely, and owned no 
authority other than that of God, whose word he pro- 
claimed: ‘‘ Thus saith the Lord.’’ The Pharisee, and 
after him the Rabbi, went no further than: ‘‘ Thus it is 
written,’ or “Thus the Wise have taught.’’ The con- 
trast is fully admitted, for what it may be worth; but 
it is worth little or nothing, if it be intended as an answer 
to the question, What was the relation of Pharisaism to 
the prophetic teaching? There was a close relation, 
as will be shown, and the contrast referred to has a certain 
bearing upon that relation; but it is hardly more than 
a superficial detail. 

The Prophets, whatever else they did, were preachers 
of righteousness, messengers of God declaring His nature 
and calling His people to turn from their sins and serve 
Him. They spoke as their inward vision of the divine 
compelled them to speak, regardless of all human opposi- 
tion or restraint. They gave such lofty and magnificent 
teaching that their words have been carefully recorded 
as Holy Scripture, and “‘ have gone: out through all the 
earth ’’ wherever the Bible is read. Their power is still 
felt, and what they have left is part of the imperishable 
treasure of the human race. 

But what of the people to whom they delivered their 
message and cast forth their winged words? The evi- 
dence is chiefly negative; for there is nothing to show 
that the people took seriously to heart the rebukes and 
warnings and pleadings of the Prophets, and there is 


186 THE PHARISEES 


nothing to show that the people, or any of them, used 
the ‘“‘ great freedom of speech’ of the Prophets. This 
second point would not be of any importance except for 
the fact that the contrast referred to above is usually 
taken to mean that the prophetic freedom is preferable 
to the Pharisaic constraint, and that an ordinary member 
of the community stood higher, morally, under the former © 
than under the latter. If “all the Lord’s people were 
prophets,’ as Moses vainly wished they might be, there 
would be something to be said for this comparison. But 
they were not, either by divine calling or by their own 
character. The prophetic heroes shine out against the 
background of a people not worthy of them, having 
many vices and by no means willing to serve the Lord 
according to the rigorous standard of the Prophets. 
Whatever the moral position of the people was, before 
the Exile, whether they exercised a prophetic freedom 
themselves, or went to the priest for instruction, or 
listened to the Prophets and then went their way and 
“burned incense to the Queen of Heaven,’ matters 
nothing. Such as they were, the Exile was their fate: 
and they had no power, as their later descendants had “ to 
withstand in the evil day.”’ The teaching of the Prophets, 
so far as the mass of the people of the time was concerned, 
had utterly failed. 

The sharp lesson of the Exile was not lost upon the 
men who, after the return, became the leaders and teachers 
of the newly established community in Jerusalem. It 
became clear to them that if Israel were ever to be made 
into a holy people, serving God fully and faithfully, some 
other method than that of the Prophets must be applied. 
Their teaching had been the highest and best that was 
possible, and just for that reason there was no further need 
of any more Prophets. What was urgently needed was 
some way of training the people to obey that teaching. 
What was the good of hearing lofty declamations about 
God, His righteousness, His sovereign power and wisdom, - 
if there were no real attempt to bring the life and character 
of the worshipper into harmony with that teaching ? 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 187 


This was what Ezra saw, and it strikes the keynote of 
Pharisaism. The one thing needful, in his view, was to 
put the teaching into practice, to lay the whole stress 
upon doing the divine will, to make the Torah, which 
contained the essence of revelation, the one supreme 
concern for the Jewish community, and for every single 
member of it. The Torah, in the written text of the 
Pentateuch, contained a great number of commands, 
express declarations of the divine will. Before everything 
else these things must be done, the will of God must be 
obeyed, the teaching must be applied. There was no 
contradiction between the Torah and the prophetic 
teaching ; both alike came ultimately from God. But 
the definite precepts of the Torah provided a more effective 
means of discipline than the rapt utterances of the Pro- 
phets, while at the same time, the moral energy, developed 
under the influence of the Prophets, was not lost but 
directed to its proper object. 

Between the Prophets and the Pharisees there was no 
breach whatever. There was a change of method, but 
not of principle. The Pharisees and the Rabbis took 
note of the fact that the line of the Prophets had come 
to an end, and that they had been followed by the 
Wise, and they claimed that they were not merely de facto 
but de jure the successors and heirs of the Prophets. 
‘‘ Prophecy was taken from the Prophets and given to 
the Wise; and it has not been taken from these”’ 
(b. B. Bath. 12°). The Pharisees never dreamed of repu- 
diating the prophetic teaching. On the contrary, they 
desired to make it effective, to bring out, in the lives 
of those whom they could influence, the fruits of ‘ godly, 
righteous and sober life ’’ which the Prophets would have 
brought out if they could. Pharisaism is applied ' 
prophecy ; and to treat it as the negation or repudiation 
of the work of the Prophets is to make the largest error 
of which the case seems to admit. The Pharisees, in 
relation to the Prophets, ‘came not to destroy but to 
fulfil ’’; mot to depart from a high ideal in order to set 
up a lower one, but to make a more effective approach 


138 THE PHARISEES 


to the higher one; not to hide it from the gaze of those 
who once had seen it, but to make it seen by those who 
had never beheld it, felt and obeyed by those who had 
disregarded it, to enforce its authority and control upon 
those who (or whose fathers) had been content merely 
to listen to the Prophets and go their own way. Unless 
it be contended that the practical application of the 
prophetic teaching to life was a matter of slight importance, 
it must be allowed that Pharisaism was the direct sequel 
and necessary completion of the work of the Prophets. 
The Pharisees were precisely those who saved the work 
of the Prophets from being wasted, by infusing the spirit 
of their teaching into the moral and religious character of 
the people. 

That the Halachah was developed on ethical, not on 
ceremonial lines, was due to the lead of the Prophets, 
which the Pharisees followed as a matter of course. If 
they had not done so, if according to the usual view they 
had repudiated the prophetic teaching or even merely 
ignored it, then the Prophets would have laboured in 
vain, and presumably would never have been heard of. 
For it was the Pharisees, more particularly the Scribes, 
to whom alone is due the preservation of the writings, 
prophetic and other, which form the Old Testament. 
If there had been no Prophets there would have been 
no Pharisees. If there had been no Pharisees, the Prophets 
would have “ perished as though they had never been.”’ 


(D) The Torah and the Moral Law. 


Part of what might properly be included under this 
head has already been dealt with when considering the 
relation of the Halachah to the moral responsibility of the 
man who lived under it (see above, in this chapter, 
section A). But a fuller treatment is necessary of the 
question, What is the relation of the Torah as a whole 
to that moral responsibility? This question includes 
several subordinate inquiries, such as, What is the function 
of conscience in a system of morals expressed in terms of 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 189 


Torah ? What is the nature of the authority which is. 
obeyed in the doing of right actions ? Howis this authority 
recognised ? 

Whatever innovations the Pharisees may have made, 
they certainly did not introduce a new morality. To 
understand the position of the Pharisees and those who 
received their teaching in regard to the fundamentals 
of morality, we must look to the Prophets and the Penta- 
teuch. The Prophets. (including, of course, Moses) gave 
the moral lead which made the religion of Israel a new 
thing, and not a mere development of Canaanite nature- 
worship. The Pentateuch contains various more or less 
definite expressions of the moral teaching of the Prophets, 
in the form of divine commands. For my present pur- 
pose it does not matter whether the Pentateuch be ascribed 
to Moses or be regarded, on the lines of the modern theory, 
as a combination of several documents of different dates. 
The point is that both the prophetic writings and the 
Pentateuch contain moral teaching, of the most direct 
and emphatic kind, the only difference being in the manner 
of its presentation. The Prophets gave it as the word 
of the Lord, that which God had bidden them to say, 
and which as His chosen messengers they forthwith said. 
The Pentateuch gave it as commands from God to Israel, 
communicated to them through Moses: “ Speak unto the 
children of Israel and say unto them, Ye shall’’ do this 
and that. Alike, therefore, in the Prophets and the 
Pentateuch the source of knowledge in regard to right 
and wrong was God Himself, directly or indirectly com- 
municating to Israel what it concerned them to know ; 
that is, what was essential to their true service of Him. 
The Teaching, par excellence, was that contained in the 
Pentateuch, which was on that account called the Torah. 
To call it the ‘ Law’ is to lay the emphasis on the wrong 
point, besides being in every respect incorrect. Neither 
the ancient Israelite, nor the Pharisee, nor the Talmudic 
Rabbi, nor the medieval nor the modern Jew has regarded 
the Pentateuch as a code of laws, comparable with the 
Institutes of Justinian or the Statutes at large, or even 


_ 140 THE PHARISEES 


with the Shulhan Aruch. Doubtless it might in some 
respects serve the purpose of a code of laws, but it was 
in itself something other and higher. It answered, for 
Israel, the question, What has God taught us? What 
does He bid us do? And whatever Israelite or Jew 
might do by way of carrying out that teaching, he did 
as an act of service to God, not as the result of looking 
up a statute-book and following its directions. 

On the lines of Judaism in all ages, morality and religion 
are inseparable; there could not be a morality apart 
from religion, or a religion without morality. Historically, 
of course, there was often a wide interval between them, 
both religion and morality being variously corrupt. Of 
this the prophetic writings give abundant evidence. 
But in theory, religion and morality were inseparable ; 
and it is precisely this truth which gave to the Prophets 
the ground of their vehement denunciation of the sins 
of the people. 

The essence of the teaching, alike in the Pentateuch 
and the Prophets, was an appeal, or demand, or challenge, 
to the moral nature in man on the ground of a similar 
moral nature in God. “ Ye shall be holy, fer I am holy ” 
(Lev. xix. 2) is the key to it all. ‘‘ He hath showed thee, 
O man, what is good ’”’ (Mic. vi. 8). And that was shown 
to man, not as something new and strange, but as some- 
thing which he could own and recognise as being in accord- 
ance with his own nature, the object of his aspirations, 
the ideal towards which he was inwardly drawn. And the 
effect of the teaching, alike of the Pentateuch and the 
Prophets, was gradually to develop the religious and 
moral nature of those who received it, and to train them 
in the right way of living as the people of God. That 
the effect, in this respect, of such teaching was great and 
lasting, is not disputed, nor open to dispute, whatever 
may be thought of the influence of the Pharisees as 
responsible for some supposed unfortunate modification. 
Both the Pentateuch and the prophetic writings (to say 
nothing of the other Scriptures of the Old Testament) 
were regarded as the chief guarantee of the truth of the 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 141 


religion and morality combined in Judaism. They were 
the written record of that truth, the source from which 
it might be drawn without limit. But always as a revela- 
tion from God, and never as a mere impersonal code of 
law, or an abstract system of morality. For this reason 
the usual terms found in treatises on Ethics do not occur 
in the Old Testament. The Moral Law is nowhere referred _ 
to under that name, and there is no word for conscience. 
There is no attempt to define the Summum Bonum, nor 
to explain the sense of moral obligation. No need was 
felt for these theoretical terms, or the explanation of 
them, simply because the facts denoted by them were 
all present and were all included in the revelation which 
God had given, and in the awakened human consciousness 
which received and responded to that revelation. When 
a prophet said “‘ Cease to do evil, learn to do well”’ (Isa. 
i. 16), he implied the Moral Law, but he did not name it ; 
he took for granted that those whom he addressed knew 
the difference between good and evil, though he did not 
refer to conscience; he assumed that they owned the 
obligation of duty, or the constraint of the moral ideal, 
though he did not use those terms. All these lay outside 
the consciousness alike of his hearers and himself. What 
was present to the minds of both was the thought of 
God as revealing to them His nature and His will con- 
cerning them. The authority which lay behind the 
command was His authority, and the command itself 
was received not as the arbitrary order of an irresponsible 
power which might conceivably be unmoral, but as the 
expression alike of the divine will and the divine nature. 
The good was not good because God commanded it, but 
He commanded it because He was good. He made 
known, to that extent at all events, what He is, in order 
that those to whom He made it known should themselves 
be (to that extent) like Him, in discerning, choosing and 
doing the good. 

Such a revelation, with its challenge and demand for 
fulfilment, could only be addressed to moral agents who 
were free to choose whether or not they would comply 


142 THE PHARISEES 


with the demand. The freedom of the will is one of the 
pillars of Judaism, though the term is not found in the 
Old Testament or the Talmudic literature. Obedience 
was given not on compulsion but on persuasion; and 
though at the lower stages of moral development it was 
reinforced by the promise of reward or the threat of 
punishment, at the higher stages the promises and threats 
were discarded, and the ideal held up of obedience through 
love, the children on earth doing the will of their Father 
in heaven. 

Under the influence of the Pentateuch and the Prophets, 
the development of the moral sense of Israel was carried 
on for centuries ; and while it is true, as has been shown 
above, that the actual results in life and conduct left 
much to be desired in the period before the Exile, that 
was not because the teaching given was unintelligible, 
but because the demand it made was felt to be too severe. 
The temptation to make terms with the religion and 
morality of the neighbouring people was too strong. 
Yet if there had not been some real moral progress, some 
lasting result of that discipline, there would have been 
nothing to serve as a basis for a new beginning after 
the return from the Exile. That there was such a moral 
basis is due in part to the work of Ezekiel and other 
teachers in Babylonia whose names are unrecorded. 
But even they would have had nothing on which to work 
unless the discipline of the Prophets and the Pentateuch 
(so far as it was in existence) had produced some lasting 
effect. 

At the period, therefore, of the return from the Exile, 
we may assume that the moral consciousness of at least 
the more highly developed members of the community 
included a clear perception of right as distinguished from 
wrong, of the obligation to do the right and refrain from 
the wrong, of the freedom to choose between them, of 
the authority of God as the source of the obligation to 
obey, not by arbitrary enactment but by revelation of 
His own nature and His will. 

In a word, there were present all the essentials of a 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 148 


strongly moral religion, or of a religious morality; in 
Judaism the terms are identical. And the truth of this 
statement is not affected by the fact that the revelation 
on which it all depended was recorded in written words 
The words alone could not have conveyed any revelation, 
unless there had been the awakened mind, the enlightened 
conscience, to apprehend what was revealed, that which 
formed the meaning and contents of the written words. 
There was, at least in the loftier minds, a real perception 
of God through the inward vision of the soul, and not 
merely a blind subjection to the letter of a command. 
And it is to be noted that the general moral consciousness 
as above described showed itself in ways for which there 
was no specific commandment, or only the most general. 
Such virtues as kindness, sympathy, pity, brotherly love, 
were the natural products of a moral consciousness so 
developed ; and although there might be specific precepts 
to practise them in this or that way, in such-and-such 
circumstances, yet the virtue did not wait on the precept ; 
it was the spontaneous motive of the heart and found 
its opportunities for itself. The precepts merely pointed 
out some ways in which the virtue might be shown. The 
source of the virtue was the mind itself enlightened by 
the divine teaching and warmed by the divine love. 

Now the question arises, What was the influence of 
Pharisaism on all this? Did it modify the moral position 
as described above, and if so, in what way? Did it 
reduce the moral freedom hitherto enjoyed to a legal 
compulsion, substituting for the light of conscience the 
letter of the law ? 

It will not now be difficult to answer these questions. 
The one definite innovation which the Pharisees made 
was to lay the strongest possible emphasis on the dotng 
of the will of God. That before everything else. But, 


t The Rabbis emphasised the fact that when the Torah was 
proclaimed at Sinai (Exod. xix.) the people answered (v. 8): “‘ All 
that the Lord hath spoken we will do,” even before they had heard 
what it was. The Haggadah picturesquely embroiders this passage. 
—b, Shabb, 887. 


144 THE PHARISEES 


no less for the Pharisees than for the Prophets, the moral 
fundamentals as described above remained unaltered. 
They assumed that same foundation, the recognition of 
the difference between right and wrong, the obligation 
of duty, the inward vision of conscience, the authority 
of God, the revelation of His nature and His will. Not 
a single one of these fundamentals did they deny or dream 
of denying ; as indeed these have been owned and main- 
tained in Judaism down to the present day. The Pharisees 
would have said, if the question had been put to them: 
‘This is all true; but what is needful is that these things 
shall be made more effective in life and conduct than 
they have been so far. God’s will must be done by a 
whole people who really mean it, and who will put the 
doing of it before everything else: God has made known 
His will; it is for His people to do it exactly as He would 
have it done. If the right way is known, then the only 
thing left is to do it. If the right way is not known, 
then it must be sought till it is found.”’ That, I believe, 
truly describes the way in which the Pharisees regarded 
the moral-religious problem of their time. They brought 
to the solution of it their conception of the Torah, written 
and unwritten, as the full and inexhaustible revelation of 
God, and the system of the Halachah. The effect of them 
was this: the Torah was made to include not merely a 
static but a progressive divine revelation, as more and 
more of its meaning was discerned and interpreted from 

age to age. And the Halachah was the definition of the — 
will of God, for the purpose of carrying it out in action, 
not by way of substituting a mechanical constraint for 
an inward obligation. All that there had been before of 
the fundamentals of morality remained under the Halachah 
in unimpaired clearness and strength, nay, even with 
growing clearness and strength, as it was the aim of the 
Pharisaic teaching to develop the Halachah in the ethical 
rather than the ritual and ceremonial direction. And it 
is to be noted that the Halachah did not touch, or if it 
merely mentioned it did not modify, the general virtues 
such as those named above, kindness, sympathy, brotherly 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 145 


love, etc.t These were precepts certainly; it was the 
will of God that men should be kind and merciful and the 
like, because He was so Himself. But they needed no 
explanation, nor any reinforcement beyond the heart’s 
own instinct—its natural response to the love of God 
which it felt and owned. The Jew, under the Pharisaic 
discipline, remained as much a free moral agent as he had 
been before. What he had, in addition, was a more 
detailed instruction of how the divine will was to be done 
in regard to precepts which were not clear, or in circum- 
stances which were not usual. As regards any individual 
Jew, much of the Halachah never touched him at all; 
but he was not on that account bereft of morality. He 
was a free moral agent, serving God according to his 
conscience and the dictates of his heart. If the circum- 
stances arose in which the Halachah did prescribe his 
action, he still remained a free moral agent serving God 
according to his conscience. And that being his intention, 
he would not feel the Halachah as a burden, but he would 
thank God for those who had taught him, out of their 
wisdom, exactly how, in his present circumstances, the 
divine will was to be done. Something will be said in 
the next chapter about the specific ethical teaching of the 
Pharisees and the Rabbis upon the main elements of right 
living. They gave that teaching chiefly in the form of 
Haggadah, as will be there explained, But the foundation 
on which they based it all was the moral nature of those 
whom they taught. If those who are not Jews find it 
difficult (as the present writer for a long time found it 
very difficult) to understand how the Moral Law was 
related to the Torah, and how the freedom of the con- 
science could keep its place under the constraint of the 
Halachah, I believe that the difficulty arises from the 
fact that in Judaism religion and morality are not two, 
but one and the same. It may be philosophically more 
correct to distinguish between religion and morality, and 
of course the regions of thought denoted by the two terms 
are usually separated for the purpose of study. But no 


1 These are the ‘‘ duties committed to the heart.’’—b. B. Metz. 58”. 
10 


146 THE PHARISEES 


such division is possible in Judaism. It is not that there 
was a Jewish religion and alongside of it a Jewish morality, 
but rather that there was in the Jewish mind a varied 
activity of thought, feeling, aspiration, belief, effort of 
wiil, all arising out of a deep sense of nearness to God, 
and recognition of His authority, and that all this together 
made up what is elsewhere distinguished as religion and 
morality. If those two terms be retained, then it is 
true to say that Judaism is all religion and at the same 
time all morality. Judaism has only with difficulty found 
equivalents for those two terms; in the native language 
of Judaism, the language of the mind and heart even 
more than the speech of the lips, there is one word which 
indicates the unity of them both, and that word is Torah. 


CHAPTER VI 
THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES—II 


It is the purpose of this chapter to give some indication 
of the Pharisaic teaching upon those topics of religion 
and morality which did not form the subject of Halachah, 
the results obtained by interpretation of Torah on its 
non-preceptive side. 

The Halachah was the defined will of God, intended 
as a means of training those who lived under it in the 
way of rightly serving Him. Here are implied the exist- 
ence of God and of man, and the fact of some relation 
between them. The Halachah threw no light on that 
relation ; it assumed the duty of obedience on the part 
of man towards God, and unfolded the implications of 
the duty so assumed. It said nothing about the nature 
and attributes of God, nor of the nature and characteristics 
of man. And, as the Torah was, ex hypothesi, the teaching 
which God Himself had given, the contents of that teaching 
upon these other subjects must obviously be learned by 
those who had received the revelation. The Pharisees 
and the Rabbis were not idle in that study, being, as 
they were, religious men intent both to learn and to teach. 
The Rabbinical literature contains an enormous quantity 
of their recorded teaching, so that the material is not 
lacking for a just appreciation of it, if only the reader 
knows how to use it in the right way. For it must never 
be forgotten that there was no requirement of doctrinal 
uniformity ; the Haggadah was not imposed on the com- 
munity as the Halachah was (see above, p. 105). There 
was never any idea of Wopang out a consistent system 


148 THE PHARISEES 


of theological doctrine, and the attempt to construct 
one, as Weber did in his System der alt synagogalen Palestin- 
ischen Theologie, is intrinsically futile and historically false. 
That one haggadic utterance contradicted another did 
not distress the Rabbis or those who learned from them. 
If both came out of the Torah, then that only showed 
how much the Torah contained. God could say many 
things at once.! 

At the same time it is possible to trace broad lines of 
general agreement, so that the religion of the Pharisees 
can be distinguished, e.g. from that of the Greeks or 
Romans; or, again, from that of the Christian Church 
which had its origin in Judaism. It is possible to observe 
that in Pharisaism certain beliefs were almost universally 
held ; and thus it is possible to arrive at a presentation 
of Pharisaic theology which should rest on a de facto agree- 
ment, but always with the reservation that there was 
never any official definition of a doctrine, to be accepted 
on pain of excommunication if it were rejected. The 
nearest approach to such an official definition, dogma in 
the true sense of the word (to be clearly distinguished 
from doctrine), is the declaration in the Mishnah (Sanh. 
x. I): ‘‘ And these are they who have no portion in the 
world to come: He who says that the resurrection of the 
dead is not [taught] in the Torah, and that the Torah 
is not from heaven; and the Apikirés.”’ It is worthy 
of note that nothing is said here of those who denied the 
existence or the unity of God. The conclusion would 
seem to follow that this statement of the Mishnah was 
intended not as a definition of the outer boundary of 
Pharisaic Judaism, because it is manifestly incomplete, 
but merely as a declaration that the boundary passed 
through the points there specified, wherever else it might 
be drawn. Probably the statement in the Mishnah was 
an official pronouncement upon some controversy of the 
time, deemed to be of special importance. If anyone 
denied the existence of God, he could not possibly be a 


1 This is shown by an ingenious haggadic combination of 
Jer. xxiii. 29 and Ps. Ixii. r1.—b. Sanh. 343. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 149 


Jew, let alone a Pharisee; if he denied the authority 
of the Torah, as the supreme revelation of God, he could 
not be a member of a community whose religion was 
inseparable from that belief. The same exclusion would 
follow if he denied that there was a life hereafter—the world 
to come. But within those wide limits there was no 
obligation in regard to belief, while yet, as above remarked, 
there was a general agreement upon some main heads 
of doctrine. Such agreement is not after all wonderful, 
though it may seem so to those who are accustomed to 
the requirement of doctrinal uniformity as expressed in 
the acceptance of a creed. For the Pharisees started 
from the same premisses-and applied to them the same 
principles, so that it need cause no surprise if they arrived 
at the same or similar main conclusions. Others, in later 
times and in quite a different region of the field of religion, 
have done much the same and have arrived at substantial 
agreement in their conclusions, while under no obligation 
to do so. 

The fact that Pharisaic and Rabbinic theology is quite 
unsystematic is mainly due to the circumstances under 
which their teaching was given. It has been shown above 
(Chapter IV) that the Pharisees were beyond everything 
else the religious teachers of the people, especially in the 
Synagogue and the School. The Rabbis worked on the 
same lines. They taught, therefore, in forms suited to 
the capacity of their hearers, by parable and exhortation, 
appeals to the heart and the imagination as well as to 
the reason; in short, as preachers, not as theologians. 
Most of the Haggadah contained in the chief Midrashim 
consists of what was presumably spoken to a congregation 
or to a band of disciples. A theological treatise, as every 
preacher knows, or ought to know, would have been 
entirely useless for such work. And if it be said that the 
teacher ought to have a systematic compendium of the 
subject-matter of his teaching, the answer would be that 
for the Scribe and the Rabbi the Torah itself was the 
treatise or compendium, and no other was needed. But 

whatever the reason may be, it was not till long after 


150 THE PHARISEES 


the Talmudic period that theological or ethical treatises 
began to be written. Of any such in Pharisaic times 
there is not a trace. Those who taught the people in the 
synagogues unfolded to them some portion of the Torah, 
now this passage, now that; and pointed their lessons of 
religion and morality by such illustrations and appeals 
as their own spiritual experience and knowledge of human 
nature suggested. It was all very simple and direct, 
and it certainly produced very substantial results in the 
training of Jewish character in the ways of piety and right 
living. It has often been remarked that there is something 
childlike in the ideas and utterances of the Talmudic 
Rabbis as expressed in their Haggadah. The remark is 
certainly true, but that does not justify the rather con- 
temptuous intention with which it is sometimes made. 
After all, these ancient religious teachers were men pre- 
cisely like those whom they taught, men who for the 
most part had to work for their living, and who had no 
higher position or advantage over their flock than that 
which their own self-denying toil of thought and study 
afforded them. They were lay-preachers, and they devoted 
themselves to that difficult service of God and their 
fellow-men for no other reason than the desire to bring 
some of their brethren in Israel to a fuller knowledge of 
the truth and a deeper trust in God. 

It will now be possible to survey the field of Pharisaic 
and Rabbinic theology in its main aspect, and to bring 
out into special clearness such features as were most 
characteristic. For it needs hardly be said that ‘the 
Pharisees made no new beginning in theology ; they were 
the heirs of the Prophets, and the whole of the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures were their inheritance. The main religious 
and moral teaching of the past was handed on to them, 
and they brought to the learning of it a devotion and 
untiring zeal which were all their own. In some respects 
they modified the older teaching, laying greater stress 
on some features and less on others, and introducing yet 
others which in the older teaching were hardly if at all 
known. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 151 


Substantially, the Pharisaic belief in God: was that 
found in the Old Testament. Of course it is true that 
in the older Scriptures there are widely different concep- 
tions of God, ranging from the hardly more than local 
deity of the earliest legends to the High and Lofty One 
of Isaiah and the great Prophets, the Creator of all things, 
the Sovereign Lord. And, equally, of course, the Rab- 
binical teachers did not reject anything about God which 
the Scriptures contained. But they laid the weight of 
emphasis upon the higher and more spiritual conception, 
as the Prophets had done; and with it they combined 
an insistence upon the nearness of God, His close personal 
relation with human beings, as of father and children, 
which was less prominent in the Prophets though by no 
means absent. Of God as the Creator and Lord of all, 
the Prophets had left them little more or higher to say. 
For the Rabbis, God was the One and undivided Supreme 
Being, without qualification or reserve. Such, in Jewish 
belief, He has always continued to be, no matter what 
evidence might be alleged to the contrary from apparent 
personification of divine attributes, speculations about 
angels, etc., of which more will be said presently. On 
the other hand, the Rabbis insisted no less emphatically 
upon the nearness of God; and it is well to remember 
that the term ‘‘ Our Father who art in heaven” was first 
used in Pharisaic circles. No doubt the Old Testament 
prepared the way for it, but it does not occur there in so 
many words. It was certainly not new either in the time 
or on the lips of Jesus. If it had been, it would have 
been at once challenged as a daring innovation. When it 
was first used there is no evidence to show ; but the reason 
why it came into use was surely that it served to express 
the personal relation of God to man more truly than any 
other term. Those who first used it did so presumably 
because their own religious experience made them feel 
the need of some term that would do this; and so well 

1 On the whole subject of the Rabbinic conception of God the 


reader should study Abeison’s masterly book on The Immanence 
of God in Rabbinical Literature (Macmillan, 1912). 


152 THE PHARISEES 


did it serve its purpose that Jesus, when he came, made 
no change and suggested no improvement. His religion 
was by no means identical with that of the Pharisees ; 
but the points of difference did not touch the belief in 
God as the Father in Heaven. 

God was thus, in the belief of the Pharisees, both 
transcendent and immanent, though they never used any 
such philosophical terms in which to express their thought. 
Neither did they attempt to solve the problem of recon- 
ciling these two opposite conceptions. Both were neces- 
sary to their thought, the former to their intellect, the 
latter to their inner experience of immediate communion 
with God. Both, therefore, were held together as of equal 
truth ; and how they were to be reconciled was doubtless 
God’s own secret. But of the two, the Rabbis dwelt, I 
think, more often and with more delight upon the nearness 
of God than upon His sole sovereignty. And it is a decided 
error to saythat the tendency since the time of the Prophets 
was to set God more and more at a distance, separated 
from the world and humanity by a widening gulf which 
needed the ministrations of angels and semi-divine beings 
to maintain intercourse between the Creator and His 
creation. Whatever Philo or the Gnostics may have 
believed and speculated on this theme, the Pharisees and 
the Rabbis did not follow that line; and the proof of it 
is their insistence on the nearness of God. A Father, 
though He be in heaven, does not need angels by whom 
to communicate with His children. “‘ From earth to 
heaven,’’ said a Rabbi, ‘‘is a five hundred years’ journey ; 
yet when a man whispers or even meditates a prayer, 
God is at hand to hear it’’ (Debar. R. ii. 10.) 

It is of course true that in the Rabbinical literature 
there are several terms used in reference to God, as modes - 
of addressing Him or speaking of Him, which have been 
thought to lend some support to the view that the God 
of Pharisaic belief was a remote and unapproachable 
being. The ancient personal name of four letters was of 
course avoided, but even the usual word for God, ‘ El’ 
or ‘Elohim,’ is less frequent than such terms as ‘‘ The 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 158 


Holy One, blessed be He,’’ ‘‘ Lord of the worlds ”’ (mostly 
in direct address), ‘“ha-Makéom,” “The King of the kings 
of the kings,’’ and again the somewhat different terms, 
Shechinah and Mémra. It is these last two which have 
most often been appealed to in support of the theory of 
subordinate divine beings, emanations of the Supreme God, 
the implication being that the Shechinah was in a sense 
God and yet other than God. If the Pharisees and the 
Rabbis had been theologians, or exponents of a philosophical 
theory, there would be more force in the argument. But 
it is surely not needful to seek for any more profound 
reason than the natural hesitation and unwillingness of 
God-fearing men to bring in the divine name unveiled, 
so to speak, into their ordinary discourse. The Rabbi 
spoke of the Shechinah when he meant the near presence 
of God. The phrase might and did lend itself to imagin- 
ative representation, especially in the vivid oriental mind. 
But what lay behind it was the thought of God, making 
His presence known and felt. That was the truth to which 
Jewish belief has always clung in its heart, whatever 
some may have said in picturesque utterance. 
Somewhat the same may be said of the belief in angels, 
as divine messengers and intermediaries. Doubtless a 
good deal is said about angels in the Rabbinical literature ; 
and one does not need the assurance of Josephus that: 
the Pharisees believed in them, as they believed in hosts 
of good and evil spirits. But the place of the angels is 
in the imaginative, not in the essential region of religion. 
They served to give form and picturesque expression to 
the thought of God as the King of kings; they were the 
ministering attendants of His court, the messengers to 
do His bidding. And the good and evil spirits were 
creations of folk-lore and popular fantasy. Neither the 
one nor the other class of beings held a place in the real 
fundamental belief of the Pharisee or the Rabbi in the 
nearness and personal influence of God Himself. “If 
trouble comes on a man”’ (God is represented as saying) 
“let him pray, not to Michael, and not to Gabriel, but 
to Me, and I will deliver him” (j. Ber. 13%.) The 


154 THE PHARISEES 


Pharisees and the Rabbis, being simple teachers of simple 
folk, may very probably have believed in angels and spirits 
and the like; but, after all, their main concern was to 
teach a plain, direct and sincere religion, of which the 
strength and inspiration were the undivided sovereignty 
of God, and His Fatherhood, His righteous will and His 
pitying love. Abelson, in his book above referred to, on 
the _Immanence of God, has given an exhaustive classifi- 
cation of all the variants in the use of the terms Shechinah 
and Holy Spirit, and the contents of a volume cannot be 
condensed into a paragraph. But all that is there set 
forth in minute detail goes to show how central, in 
Rabbinical belief, was the thought of the nearness of God. 
In this respect, Rabbinical Judaism had nothing to learn 
from Christianity, while it avoided, to its own very great 
advantage, the peculiar and bewildering doctrinal form in 
which, for most Christians, the nearness of God is expressed. 

The fundamental attributes of God in Pharisaic belief 
were the same as those indicated in the Old Testament, 
foremost among them being His justice and His love. 
It would be possible to imagine a Judaism which left 
out the love of God (though in fact it never did); but a 
Judaism without a deep and even passionate conviction 
of the justice of God is inconceivable. If any knowledge 
of God at all was vouchsafed to the intuition of Prophet, 
Pharisee or Rabbi, it was the knowledge of Him as just 
and righteous; and, in this direction, Judaism has said . 
the last word that so far ever has been said. 

The omniscience and omnipresence of God were divine 
attributes never questioned in the Pharisaic theology. 
So also His omnipotence. And there was never any 
idea of distinguishing between His attributes and Himself, 
although the Haggadah sometimes allowed itself to represent 
the attributes in more or less personal form. Whatever 
His attributes, it was always God who possessed them, 
and the distinction of attributes was never allowed to 
suggest a distinction of persons (in any sense) in the 
Godhead. Whatever to the Jewish mind was divine was 
to be ascribed to the one sole supreme undivided God. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 155 


Next, of the nature and characteristics of man in 
Pharisaic thought. Here, again, most if not all of the main 
lines were the continuation of the teaching of the Old 
Testament. Man was a created being, differing from other 
creatures in that he was made in the image and likeness 
of God. He was a conscious moral agent, able to look 
up to his Maker, to own the authority of his Lord, and 
to love Him whom he learned at last to call his Father. 
He had freedom to choose between good and evil, righteous- 
ness and sin, service and disobedience. He was thought 
of as a soul dwelling in a body; but both soul and body 
were from God, and if the soul were that which bore the 
divine image and likeness, the body was to be treated 
with care and reverence as its earthly dwelling-place. 
The asceticism which made a practice, for spiritual ends, 
of defying, chastising and tormenting the body, never 
found a place in Judaism, not even amongst the older 
Hasidim.t There was, in some Pharisaic circles, an 
austerity of living which bore a close outward resemblance 
. to asceticism, but it was the expression of a quite different 
principle. The Hasid never forgot that ‘‘ the earth is 
the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof’’ (Ps. xxiv. I); and 
the real ascetic never remembered it. 

Perhaps the most characteristic development which 
the Pharisees made of the teaching of the Old Testament 
as to the nature of man, was in the doctrine of the two 
Yétzérs—impulses, inclinations, tendencies—the Yetzer 
ha-t6b, the good inclination, and the Yetzer ha-ra, the 
evil inclination. The sources of this conception are 
found in the Old Testament, but it was elaborated by the 
Rabbis with a wealth of illustration and a keenness of 
psychological discernment which were all their own. 
Every human being was thought to be under the influence 
of these two inclinations, though not the helpless slave of 


1 See the admirable monograph of Biichler, Some Types of Ancient 
Jewish Piety, Jews’ College Publications, No. 8, 1922, the most 
exhaustive treatise I know upon this subject. It is not too much 
to say that Biichler understands «he character of the Hasid in every 
detail, 


156 “THE PHARISEES 


either of them. Man’s will was free to choose which 
of the two leadings he would follow, and moral victory 
consisted in overcoming the evil inclination; indeed, the 
ideal of the perfect life, morally, was the final and complete 
subjugation of the Yetzer ha-ra. In the Rabbinical 
theology the whole of the moral life of man is described 
in terms of the two Yetzers, and it is to be observed that 
both are regarded as having been implanted in man by 
the Creator Himself. There was never any question of 
a dualism, even in the creation of a world which includes 
evil or of a human nature which makes room for sin. 
The Rabbis were painfully aware of the moral corruption 
of human nature, which they accounted for by the presence 
in every man of the Yetzer ha-ra; but they were not to 
be shaken out of their confident belief in the fundamental 
righteousness of the Creator, and they taught that even 
the Yetzer ha-ra had, so to speak, its divine side.t God 
planted it in human nature not that man should yield 
to it—He never willed that anyone should sin—but that 
man should have the frequent opportunity of exercising 
his will on the side of good and against evil, and thereby 
realise more and more that likeness to God in which he 
was made. 

The doctrine of the two Yetzers, though it be cast in 
a form unfamiliar to modern thought, was no childish 
conception. It served as the vehicle of the teaching of 
men who were severe moralists and intent on the service | 
of God, and whose main purpose as teachers was to help 
those they taught to live “a godly, righteous and sober 
life to the glory of His holy Name.” For the philosophy 
of the problem they cared little, if indeed they knew 
anything about it; but no one who has any knowledge 
of their teaching will deny that they did understand its 
practical realities. 


1 This is one of a series of sayings, paradoxical in form but only 
for the purpose of emphasising their truth, recorded in Ber. R. ix. 
The particular reference to the Yetzer ha-ra is given ibid. ix. 7, where 
the Yetzer ha-ra is included amongst the things which God had 
made, ‘‘ and behold they were very good.”’ 


’ 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 157 


Apart from these two inclinations, the other charac- 
teristics of man present little that is distinctive of Rab- 
binical thought. The capacity for knowledge, the power 
of reason and reflection, the various affections, belonged 
to his nature as a spiritual being; and his bodily powers 
were those of a creature whom God had endowed with 
life. All were from God, and all were to be used as being 
His gift, for ends not contrary to His will. Yet the 
powers of mind, soul, spirit, were recognised as higher 
than those of the body; and though the body might in 
various ways be made to serve the divine will, as in the 
doing of right acts, yet the real service of God was rendered 
by the will, thought, affection, conscience, the devotion 
of the spiritual nature of man to God, known, adored, 
reverenced and loved. This is the keynote of Bahya’s 
wonderful book on The Duties of the Heart ; and anyone 
who has been accustomed to think of Rabbinical Judaism 
as arid and unspiritual, should read that book, and 
especially the last chapter, on the love of God. 

Such, in outline, were the conceptions in the mind of 
the Rabbis concerning God and man. We have now to 
consider their beliefs concerning the relation between 
them. The general character of that relation is indicated 
in the terms already indicated as applied to God—Maker, 
Lord, Father. The first and second are found in the 
Old Testament, and the third is clearly foreshadowed 
there. But it is to be noted that, whatever may have 
been the usage in earlier times, the Rabbis applied these 
terms to the relation between God and men in general, 
all men and not Israel alone. This indeed is obvious 
in regard to the first ; the human race is the handiwork 
of God and of none other. So, too, all men are morally 
accountable to Him, under His sovereign authority, 
whether they owned Him or not. But it is not so obvious 
that God was regarded as the Father of all men; and it 
has usually been claimed that Christianity first taught 
the extension of the range of the Fatherhood of God 
from Israel to mankind in general. It would not be 
true to say that the Rabbis thought of God without 


158 THE PHARISEES 


qualification as the Father of all men; neither would it 
be true to say the same of Christian teaching. In each 
case there is a limitation, to be pointed out presently. 
But, in the main aspects of providence, loving-kindness, 
pity, the Fatherhood of God extended to all mankind, and 
was not reserved for Israel alone. ‘‘ His tender mercies 
are over all his works,” said the Psalmist (Ps. cxlv. 9), 
and the thought was not only accepted but dwelt on 
in the Rabbinical literature.t It was recognised and 
‘taught that not only all Israel but the good amongst the 
Gentiles have a share in the world to come (T. Sanh. 
xiii. 2), And this great utterance of R. Jehoshua b. 
Hananjah, delivered in answer to the narrower declaration 
of R. Eliezer, was never repudiated. It may be freely 
admitted that this more general conception does not find 
frequent expression in the Rabbinical literature. And 
here comes in the limitation referred to above; and the 
clue to it is given by a saying of R. Akiba (Aboth iii. 18) : 
‘“‘ Happy are Israel in that they are called children of the 
All-Present ; but it was by a special love to them that it 
was made known to them that they were called children 
of the All-Present.’’ That is to say, the relation of children 
to Father was only effectively realised by those who 
belonged to the community of Israel. All others were 
indeed potentially His children, but could have no know- 
ledge of their true relation to him except through the 
revelation made to Israel. That revelation had been ~ 
offered to all the nations, but only Israel had accepted 
it (Mechilta, 62°). Those outside the community of Israel, 
the Gentiles of every race, could only become effectively 
children of God by joining the community, or at least 
by sharing in the revelation made to Israel. And it was 
the mission of the ‘‘ chosen people,” that for which alone — 
they were chosen, to bring such knowledge to the Gentile 
world. That there was a good deal of quiet missionary 
work done by Jews in the last century before the common 


era is evident from the fact that Christianity spread — i 


rapidly, and always began from some Jewish centre, or 
: See Abelson, Jmmanence of God, pp. 300 ff. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 159 


at all events in places where the ground had been prepared 
by Jewish influence. The great disasters which befell 
the Jews by the capture of Jerusalem in 70 c.E., and the 
final overthrow of the Jewish national existence in the 
War of Bar Cocheba, 135 c.E., put an end to all missionary 
work on the Jewish side. The sorely stricken community 
had all it could do to maintain its own existence. But, 
so long as missionary effort was still possible, it was the 
aim of the Jewish teachers to spread the knowledge of 
the God who had revealed His will in the Torah, and to 
bring as many as could be persuaded to come “‘ under the 
wings of the Shechinah.” 

Thus, the conception of the Fatherhood of God was only 
realised consciously within the community of Israel, and 
to the Gentile mind it was not present; while yet, in 
the intention of God and in His general providence, it 
was universally true. This is certainly a limited con- 
ception of the relation of man to God. But it is to be 
observed that Christianity only replaced one limitation 
by another. For Christians were taught that they became 
effectively children of God only through faith in Christ. 
Doubtless, in Christ ‘“‘there is neither Greek nor Jew, 
circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, 
bondman, freeman”’ (Col. iii. 11). But what of those 
who were not “in Christ ’’—the great mass of mankind 
who never heard of him? Were they, or were they not, 
children of God while still in their ignorance and blindness ? 
The teaching of the Church was that men became sons 
of God by adoption (Rom. viii. 15), and were not so 
already by birth. And whether or not that has been the 
consistent teaching of the Church, it has certainly guided 
her practice. Neither Judaism nor Christianity has ever, 
unless in recent times, taken up the position that all 
human beings are God’s children, Torah or no Torah, 
Christ or no Christ. In the early centuries of the common 
era, such an unqualified universalism was perhaps hardly 
conceivable, certainly it was not often or clearly expressed. 
But it is not for Christianity to reproach Judaism with 
the absence of it. 


4 


160 THE PHARISEES 


To come back to the fact of the relation between man 
and God, as represented in Rabbinical teaching. It was 
a necessary element in that relation that there should be 
intercourse between them, communication of some kind 
from God to man and from man to God. These are 
represented by revelation and prayer. For the Pharisees 
and the Rabbis, revelation was summed up in Torah. 
Not that they denied for a moment that revelation had 
been made to the Prophets, but that they held that all 
which had been revealed to the Prophets was contained 
in the Torah. As, of course, it was; meaning by the 
Torah all that the Pharisees meant by it. Revelation, 
in the last resort, was a purely spiritual process, com- 
munication from the divine mind to the human mind; 
and what was communicated was knowledge, both of the 
nature of God and of His will. It has been shown in the 
chapter on Torah and Tradition how the original meaning 
of Torah was enlarged by the Pharisees, and it will be 
sufficient here to lay stress on the fact that the real Torah 
was that which was apprehended in the minds of those 
to whom the revelation had been given. The written 
word was the record of it, a priceless record but not to 
be so read that its literal meaning exhausted all that there 
was in the Torah. And whatever may be thought of 
the validity of the Pharisaic theory of Tradition, as a 
theory, in practice it made all the difference between a 
living religion and a dead one. A fact of which the . 
Pharisees were very well aware. The Torah, to the © 
Pharisees, was the full revelation which God had made, 
for ever inexhaustible, because the mind which received 
that teaching, studied it, meditated on it, prayed over 
it, was looking at ‘‘things unseen and eternal’ and 
beholding them by the light of God. The revelation had 
been given to Moses, and in a lesser degree to the Prophets ; 
but to study Torah was, in a manner of speaking, to follow 
in the train of Moses and the Prophets, and by their help 
to see something of what had been shown to them. When 
it is taught, in countless passages in the Talmud and 
Midrash, that a man should ever be diligent in studying 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 16} 


Torah, what was intended was not the mere turning the 
pages of a book, or repeating words learned by rote; 
that was only the lower end, and perhaps some never 
got beyond that lower end; but the upper end and the 
higher meaning were reached in some such contemplation 
of heavenly truth as I have faintly indicated. 

If revelation was confined to a few chosen to receive it, 
prayer was for all; and prayer was the intercourse of 
spirit between God and man. On the human side it was 
aspiration, petition, entreaty, praise, thanksgiving; on 
the divine side it was blessing, help given, mercy bestowed, 
forgiveness granted. It is needless to enumerate the 
main elements of prayer, because they are the same 
fundamentally in all religions which can be called spiritual. 
With other religions we have here no concern. The 
essentials of prayer were known in the experience of 
Pharisees and Rabbis no less than in that of Christians ; 
and if that statement be challenged, then two great 
witnesses can be called in support of it, the Book of 
Psalms and the Jewish Liturgy. The former was arranged 
and in part composed by Pharisees, and the latter is the 
creation of the Rabbis; both, therefore, the devotional 
expression of the Pharisaic mind. No one will dispute 
the supremacy of the Psalms, as the utterance of the 
devout aspirations of the soul; wherever they are known, 
_ the words of the Psalmists have become the sacred and 
loved words of worship. The Jewish liturgy is but little 
known outside the community of Israel. If it were, 
there would be less said about the mechanical formalism 
of Jewish prayers. Of course, any fixed form of prayer 
can become a mere form, and the recital of it a soulless 
repetition. No doubt it has been so in Jewish worship. 
No doubt it has been.so in Christian worship. But 
neither on the one side nor on the other does this alter 
the fact that the thoughts, feelings and aspirations which 
found expression alike in the Jewish and the Christian 
liturgies, were deep and sincere. As in the case of the 

Halachah, so in the case of prayer, the Rabbis were keenly 
_ alive to the danger of formalism, and were careful to guard 

ll 


162 THE PHARISEES 


against it. As they taught that the mitzvoth were only 
rightly performed if done with the conscious purpose of 
serving God thereby, so they taught that prayer without 
devout intention, kavvanah, was no prayer and was 
spiritually worthless (cp. M. R. ha. Sh. ii. 7).t A liturgy, 
by the necessity of the case, is intended to utter the 
prayers of a community, not those of an individual as 
such. The Jewish liturgy, though not uniform for the 
entire multitude of Jews in all lands, is uniform for large 
groups of them, some following the Ashkenazi Order, 
some the Sephardi, and so on. And there is a good deal, 
both in the material and the arrangement, which is common 
to all the various types. To name only one point, the 
recital of the Shema is an element in every Jewish liturgy. 
But it has not been, so far as I know, the custom amongst 
Jews, unless in recent times, for a synagogue or a local 
group of synagogues to have a private liturgy, compiled 
and arranged to suit its own taste. Throughout the 
greater part of the history of the Synagogue, the theory 
of the liturgy has been, if I understand it aright, that it 
should utter the prayers of the whole community of 
Israel, the one people adoring the one God, and should 
not merely voice the worship of this or that particular 
group of Jews. The function of the Halachah in serving 
to hold the community together was shared by the liturgy. 
And that was no doubt the reason why the Rabbis who 
framed it were so minutely careful in deciding what 
should be included in it, what should be said, and when, 
and where, and by whom. The Halachah has been 
deemed a rigid yoke of bondage which crushed out the 
life of religion in the Jewish soul, and the Jewish ordering 
of public prayer has been condemned as the reduction 
of devotion to a deadly formalism; but those who com- 
prehend the inner meaning of the Halachah and can 
discern the radiance that shines from within the liturgy, 


1 On kavvanah, see the essay by H. G. Enelow in the Kohler 
Festschrift, pp. 83 ff. And on the general Jewish conception of 
prayer, the article ““ Das Gebet in Judentum,” by Felix Perles, in 
his Jiidische Skizzen, pp. 129 ff. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 168 


will own that the Pharisees and the Rabbis knew well 
what they were about, and in Halachah and liturgy 
built no unworthy temple for the service and worship 
of God. 

We have so far, in our study of the relation between 
God and man as presented in Pharisaic and Rabbinical 
theology, regarded that relation as unbroken, the relation 
between Creator and creature, Lord and servant, Father 
and child, united by love and obedience, blessing and 
trust. Man is made in the image and likeness of God; 
the perfect life of man would be the Imitatio Dei. The 
actual facts of experience show a very different state of 
things. The harmony that should exist between God 
and man is broken by sin, evil in the individual and in 
mankind at large. We have now, therefore, to inquire 
how the Rabbis dealt with the problem of evil, or rather 
not with the problem of evil as a philosophical theory, 
but with the actual facts of human nature discerned in 
the lives of their fellow-men and read in their own ex- 
perience. 

The need of the soul was for harmony with God, perfect 
accord between the human will and the divine. To attain 
to that harmony was the constant aspiration of the soul ; 
and the ideal was a harmony perfect and unbroken. 
Whether that ideal had ever been reached in known 
human experience, is a question which no religious teacher, 
Jewish or other, would be hasty to answer. But the 
Pharisees and the Rabbis held that it was not intrinsically 
impossible, and that harmony, interrupted indeed but 
nevertheless restored, could be attained by the faithful 
doing of God’s will. That which broke the harmony was ~ 
sin, and the means of restoring the broken harmony was 
repentance answered by forgiveness. Sin and repentance 
occupy a very large place in Pharisaic theology ; and the 
reason is that Pharisaism as a religion turns wholly on 
the doing of God’s will. Sin was the disobeying of the 
divine will, the defiance or disregard or neglect of what 
God had commanded. Moreover, just as the mitzvah 
was not truly performed unless there was the conscious 


164 THE PHARISEES 


intention of serving God thereby, so a sin was gravest 
when it was intentional, though it did not cease to be a 
sin if it was done in ignorance or by oversight or careless- 
ness. If an act had been done which was forbidden, or 
left undone which was commanded, then there was a 
failure, from whatever cause, to carry out the divine will 
in that particular instance, and that was sin. But further, 
just as there was goodness not defined by the prescriptions 
of the Halachah, the natural virtues of the good heart, 
so there was sin in the failure of those virtues, or the 
exercise of the corresponding vices. Hatred, jealousy, 
cruelty, and the like, all that implied the refusal of sym- 
pathy and love towards one’s fellow-men, the active 
exercise of ill-will, all came under the head of sin, and, 
where they were present, broke the harmony between 
the soul and God. 

Before going on to speak of repentance and forgiveness, 
it may be well to make two remarks which will serve to 
throw light on the Pharisaic conception of sin. 

It has often been said in disparagement of Pharisaism 
that its idea of goodness is fear of sin, a negative and not 
a positiveidea. Like many criticisms of Pharisaic teaching, 
this is true in form but not in substance. It is true 
that the Pharisees did, to a large extent, identify goodness 
with ‘fear of sin’; but it is not true that they meant 
by ‘ fear of sin’ a merely negative attitude of mind which 
could be attained by inaction. It has been well shown ~ 
by Biichler in his recent monograph on Types of Ancient 
Palestinian Jewish Piety (see especially p. 30), that ‘ fear 
of sin’ is “‘ the religious readiness of the mind to realise 
the law’’; in other words, the effective desire to fulfil 
the will of God under all circumstances. To fear sin is 
not merely to refrain from wrong acts, or words or thoughts, 
it is to guard against the failure to do at any moment 
what at that moment would be the truest service of God. 
The form of the expression is negative; the meaning is 
intensely positive. And that this is so is shown, or 
confirmed, by the saying of R. Johanan b. Zaccai (Aboth 
ii, 13), in which he commended his disciple, Eleazar 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 165 


b. Arak, for declaring that the secret of the ‘“‘ good way ”’ 
in which a man should walk was that he should have a 
good heart. There is a positive source for goodness, 
approved by a great Pharisee, who evidently found no 
contradiction between such a conception of goodness and 
that implied in ‘fear of sin.’ 

The other remark which needs to be made is that 
Pharisaism never drew such conclusions as to the irre- 
parable effects of sin as were drawn by Paul in the Epistle 
to the Romans. It was never for the Pharisee true that 
once a sinner always a sinner, in the sense that a man 
who broke even one mitzvah was thenceforth under a 
burden of sin from which there was no release ; since the 
Torah could not release him, and there was, on Paul’s 
lines, none that could, except Christ. Doubtless, an act 
once committed could not be undone; and if it was a 
wrong act it remained so. And if the Pharisees had been 
philosophers they might have speculated on the problem 
of the irrevocable past. But their concern was with the 
living present, and more particularly with the living soul. 
They taught that repentance and forgiveness opened the 
way of escape from the grip of the past, and prevented 
it from becoming the mere futile encumbrance which it 
would be if the Pauline theory were true. Moreover, the 

Pharisees were not in the least distressed by the fact 
_ (if they knew of it) that the Torah could not bring them 
release. To do that was not what the Torah was for. 
It did not itself give them release, but it told them that 
God could and would. And they needed no other help 
than His, as indeed why should they? All that Paul 
said about the burden of the Law, and of man being sold 
into bondage under sin, was presumably true of himself ; 
but it did not correspond to anything in the experience 
of the Pharisees. They knew as much of the psychology 
of sin as he did, while they had a quite different theological 
conception of it. Paul is the very last person who ought 
to be relied on as a witness to the nature of Pharisaism. 

Individual sin, by which the harmony between God 
and man was broken or prevented, had its remedy in 


166 THE PHARISEES 


repentance and forgiveness. Repentance is the act of the 
soul seeking to return to God after having, through sin, 
turned away from Him. That essential meaning of 
repentance is better expressed by the Hebrew word 
“teshubah,’ (mawwn), one of the great words of the 
Pharisaic theology. It was both natural and inevitable 
that, in a religion which required the doing of the will 
of God before everything else, the doctrine of repentance 
should become of immense importance. If, under any 
circumstances, repentance were impossible, the result 
would be spiritual disaster. In other words, if the harmony 
between God and man, sought in the doing of His will 
and broken through sin, could not be restored, there 
would be the end of all religious and moral life. Repent- 
ance, accordingly, was presented in the Pharisaic theology 
as always possible, no matter how great the sin or how 
vile the sinner. But, at the same time, repentance must 
be a real turning of the soul to God, not a mere verbal 
or formal profession; and, where possible, it must be 
accompanied by acts of reparation and amends.t So 
much the sinner could do ; more he could not do, to restore 
the broken harmony. What remained was the act of God 
in freely forgiving the penitent. As repentance was 
always possible, so, in the Pharisaic teaching, God always 
forgave the sinner who truly repented. There has never 
been in Judaism, Pharisaic or any other, an unpardonable 
sin; and such a doctrine would never have got into 


t As long as the Temple stood, the sacrifices for sin were still 
offered ; but the sacrifices did not cover the whole field of possible 
sins, and even where they were applicable it was held that they 
were insufficient without repentance. They were offered because 
it was the direction of the Torah that they should be offered. But 
the deeper insight, of which the enlarged conception of the Torah 
is the witness, was already in times while the Temple was still in 
existence, recognising the spiritual value of repentance and attach- 
ing less importance to the ancient sacrificial system. When the 
Temple fell, the sacrifices had only a historical importance, If they 
were minutely discussed in the Mishnah, that was because they were 
part of what was ordained in the Torah, not because they were still 
of primary importance. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 167 


Christianity if those who based it on the words of Jesus 
(in Matt. xii. 32 and parallels) had known more than they 
did about the language which Jesus spoke and the common 
phrases which he used. That ignorance has produced a 
theological monstrosity in the doctrine of the Unpardon- 
able Sin for which Jesus ought not to be held responsible, 
and of which the Pharisees and the Rabbis never had the 
remotest notion. They always taught that God forgave 
one who truly repented; and they did not complicate 
this simple conception by introducing the mediation of 
any third person. For the essence of repentance and 
forgiveness was not the cancelling of a debt, but the 
renewing of personal relations between the soul and God, 
the restoring of the harmony which sin had broken. A 
mediator might plead that a debt might be forgiven, 
might offer to pay it himself, and the like; and no doubt 
illustrations of that kind may be found in the abundant 
material of the Midrash. But no mediator could come 
into the direct personal relation of the soul to God, which 
was that of child to father. The Pharisaic doctrine of 
repentance and forgiveness assumes that relation as its 
basis. If it was true (so far as human word and thought 
can express divine reality), then the forgiveness of God 
meeting the repentance of man was the natural way in 
which love went out to meet love, and there is no more 
to be said. 

But individual sin was not the only factor in the dis- 
ordered moral condition of man. The sight of the Gentile 
world as it presented itself to Pharisees and Rabbis, to 
say nothing of the Jewish people of whose moral defects 
they were well aware, showed a state of moral corruption 
which could not be accounted for merely by individual 
sin. There were ignorance and blindness as well, super- 
stition and degradation, cruelty, lust, selfishness, and all 
human vices. There was, in short, a human race which 
showed but faint traces of the divine image and likeness 
in which it was made, so that the idea of a harmony between 
God and man seemed reduced to a futile mockery. 
Christian theology has extended the word sin so as to 


168 THE PHARISEES 


include all this mass of evil in human nature and life; 
and has dealt with it on the lines of the doctrine of the 
atonement.t Pharisaic theology took a quite different line. 
It did not apply the word sin to the general evil in the 
human race, but accounted for that condition by pointing 
to the presence and active influence in every human 
being of the Yetzer ha-ra, the evil inclination described 
above. The Yetzer ha-ra was not itself sin, but it was 
the occasion of sin, providing both the temptation and the 
opportunity, or rather providing the temptation when 
the opportunity was offered. If the Yetzer ha-ra was 
present in every human being, and if there were not also 
present the means of controlling it, viz. the knowledge of 
God and the desire to do His will, and the divine help 
sought and given, then the result on the great scale of 
the human race would be such an appalling moral con- 
fusion as in fact was there. 

Such in its essence was the Rabbinical conception of 
human evil in general, a simple, clear and profound reading 
of the facts of the case. There is nothing strained or 
artificial about it; and while it has none of the dramatic 
force of the corresponding Christian doctrine of the Fall 
and the Redemption, it escapes the pitfalls and perplexities 
of that doctrine. It is a sane and sober treatment of a 
grave problem by men who were accustomed to think 
deeply on the perplexities of life, and who took religion 
and morality in deadly earnest. So, of course, did Christian 
teachers, from Paul downwards; but, if the Christian 
teachers were obliged to bring in Christ as the governing 
factor in their solution of the problem, that is not 
to say that the Jewish solution, from which that factor 
was necessarily absent, was any the less valid for want 
of it. 

The Jewish solution assumed no sudden entrance of 
evil into the world, nor any sudden defeat of its power ; 


1 On this point, and on much of the contents of this chapter, 
see an article by the present writer, ‘“‘ The Fundamentals of Religion 
as Interpreted by Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism,’’ in the 
Hibbert Journal, January 1923. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 169 


no total depravity through the sin of Adam, no deliverance 
through a special agent conceived as both divine and 
human. It assumed the influence of God slowly working 
in all human lives, to bring about in the course of ages 
the harmony which ought to be, between the Creator 
and His creatures, the Father and His children. There 
was no other way, if the fundamental facts were as Pharisees 
and Rabbis believed them to be. But it was the duty 
of every true servant of God to work with Him towards 
that great end, by spreading the knowledge of God, and 
winning men to His service. The end of that gradual 
process of salvation was far off, how far was known only 
to God; but its attainment was as certain as that the 
power and the love of God were sufficient. It did not 
depend on some sudden exercise of divine power, in a 
form and through an agent hitherto unknown. The 
factors remained the same throughout—-God and man; 
and the immeasurable length of the process was due to 
the infinite complexity of the human lives involved, age 
after age. The note of hope has, therefore, always 
sounded in Rabbinical Judaism, in regard to the future 
of mankind, an unconquerable optimism based on un- 
shakable trust in the goodness and righteousness of God. 

Hope, in the Pharisaic theology, did not confine itself 
to an expectation so vague and general as that just 
indicated. It gradually defined its object in a twofold 
form, the life hereafter and the reign of the Messiah. 
To the consideration of this twofold expectation the 
remainder of this chapter will be devoted. 

This expectation for the first time became definite in 
the teaching of the Pharisees; but, like most of what 
they taught, it had its roots in the Old Testament, par- 
ticularly in the writings of the Prophets. The references 
indeed to a future life, other than that of the shadowy 
existence of departed spirits in Shedl, are in the Old 
Testament but few and doubtful. Certainly they cannot 
be taken to indicate a general belief common to all Israel. 
And when that general belief did emerge into the Jewish 
consciousness, it did not do so in the form of a belief in 


170 THE PHARISEES 


immortality. It took the form of a belief in the resurrec- 
tion of the dead, the recalling to life at some future time 
of those who had died previously, and who, until that 
future time, were as much dead as if there were no 
resurrection. Immortality means, of course, that the soul 
does not die with the death of the body, but lives, 
whether there be a resurrection or not. The belief in 
immortality, so defined, is indicated, though only faintly, 
in the Rabbinical literature; but it is beyond question 
that the prevailing expectation was that of resurrection, 
of the body with the soul, the two being united again 
as they had been in the former life on earth. 

The belief in the resurrection of the dead had already 
become general at a time so early as to be definitely 
expressed in the second benediction of the Shemoneh 
Esreh, i.e. probably in the Maccabean Age; and there 
must have been a long period during which it was assuming 
definite form. It is generally held to have been largely 
due to Persian influence, and if this means only that 
the form or forms which came to be used in defining the 
belief were to a considerable extent borrowed from Persia, 
the statement is no doubt true. But if it means that 
the belief itself, or more particularly the spiritual longing 
which found expression in the belief, was borrowed from 
Persia, then I hold that the statement is not true. - Partly 
because it is intrinsically improbable that a wholly new 
religious conception should be adopted from a foreign 
source by a people who up till then knew nothing about 
it, and partly because there is enough in the Old Testament 
to explain the appearance of such a belief sooner or later, 
and enough in the teaching of the Pharisees to explain 
why they should be the ones to develop this particular 
belief. This is an aspect of the question to which less 
attention has been given by writers on the subject than 
the details of strange and fantastic imagery in which the 
belief was clothed. The Haggadists gave free rein to 
their imagination in describing the things that should 
happen in the end of the days ; and still more the Apoca- 
lyptic writers made this, as was natural, one of their 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 171 


main themes. But all these lie on the surface, so to 
speak ; and whatever worth they have (it is not much) 
is gained from their association with deep-seated hopes 
and convictions in the Jewish mind. It is these last 
that alone are of real importance, as is shown by the 
fact that it is these which find utterance in the Jewish 
liturgy, from which the Apocalyptic imagery is almost 
if not entirely absent. 

If the Old Testament contains enough to prepare the 
way for the belief in the resurrection, and if the principles 
of Pharisaism are sufficient to explain its actual appearance, 
there is no need to discuss the question where this or any 
other religious belief was ever taken over by one nation 
from another. I shall confine myself accordingly to the 
first and second points, though in the reverse order. That 
is, I shall try to show why the Pharisees, and they alone, 
developed the belief in the resurrection, and how in doing 
so they were building on the foundation of the Old Testa- 
ment. That they held the belief in the resurrection is 
attested by Josephus (Ant. xviii. I, 3), who, in the next 
section, says that the Sadducees did not share the belief. 
The reason for this difference was surely not a mere 
petulant opposition of the one party towards the other, 
but is to be found in the fundamental principle of Phari- 
saism which the Sadducees did not accept. The gradual 
result of the Pharisaic teaching was not at all the sterilising 
of religion, as usually supposed, but, so to speak, the 
intensive culture of it. Religion, as the conscious service 
of, and devotion to the holy, righteous and loving God 
whose will was to be done, was made the supreme concern 
of those who followed the Pharisees. Both as an individual 
and as a member of thé community, the Pharisaic Jew 
felt that religion came much more closely home to him 
than ever it had done in earlier ages. Which is one 
reason, though not the only one, why many of the Psalms 
show such depth and power of religious feeling. They 
may not have been written by Pharisees, though some of 
them were; but they were written in a time when religion, 
personal and communal, was strongly felt and vividly 


172 THE PHARISEES 


expressed, when it was the subject of devout meditation, 
and when religious experience was becoming more intimate 
and profound. Whatever influences there may have been 
in the national life to bring about such a condition of the 
Jewish mind, Pharisaism was certainly one of them, also 
the strongest and most definite. The Sadducees had 
nothing to contribute in the least likely to produce such 
a result. 

Such being the position arrived at under the influence 
of Pharisaic teaching, it would be only natural to expect 
that new ideas, or new forms of old ideas, of religion 
should be developed. Now the Prophets had said much 
about a future time when the power of God should establish 
a reign of peace and righteousness on the earth, had 
spoken of a great day of the Lord when judgment would 
be passed upon good and bad, and had declared (in the 
earlier prophetic writings) that a man chosen by God, 
and anointed (Mashiah—Messiah) for his great task, 
should appear in the last days and bring in the Golden 
Age. These prophetic utterances had remained from the 
time of the Prophets, as it would seem, merely as lofty 
eloquence and the expression of an only general hope. 
To the Pharisees they were, though not included in the 
written Torah, yet part of what God had revealed to 
His special messengers, and therefore to be studied and 
laid to heart. That these declarations were and must 
be true followed from the fact that God had sent the 
Prophets to make them. But there was more than that. 
God was just and righteous, and His promise could never 
be broken. His will was holy and good; and it was, 
as the Pharisees taught, the supreme duty of man to do 
His will. There was ‘ reward ’! to be enjoyed and ‘ merit ’ 
to be acquired through the doing of His will. There was 
retribution to be expected for sin; in short, there was 
the certain conviction that the disorder and moral con- 
fusion of the world, as seen in actual fact, must give way 
in the end and be replaced by the order and beauty of a 


t For the meaning of merit and reward, see above, Chapter V, 
pp. 128 ff. 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 173 


world where God is the only ruler, and where all who 
dwell in it join in serving and adoring Him. 

But when the end of the days shall at length have come, 
and the Messiah shall have established the kingdom of 
peace and righteousness, if then only those who shall be 
living at that time shall enjoy the blessing, what of those 
who died long ago and who yet in their day served God 
as faithfully as any of their posterity ? Especially, what 
of the martyrs who had laid down their lives, as in the 
_Maccabean time, rather than be unfaithful to the God 

whom they served? According to the ancestral belief, 
their departed spirits were in Sheél, to remain there 
without hope of any change in their condition. What 
became of the justice of God in their case? Why should 
the mere accident of living in one age rather than another 
make so tremendous a difference between them in regard 
to their ultimate condition? Such questions could not 
but arise in minds which, under Pharisaic influence, were 
acquiring a deeper insight into the problems of religion 
and life. And gradually the answer began to take shape 
that when the new order was established God would call 
back to life, from Sheol, the righteous of former times, 
in order that they also might share in the blessing of the 
reign of peace and righteousness. And this is the resur- 
rection, in its simplest meaning, apart from all the imagery 
with which it was set forth by Haggadists and Apoca- 
lyptists. By some such line of thought as that just 
indicated, the belief in the resurrection came into the 
Jewish, and more particularly the Pharisaic mind. It is 
impossible to say precisely when or by whom it was first 
conceived or first put into words. But we shall not be 
far wrong in supposing that the few passages in the Old 
Testament which seem to refer to a future life were, so 
to speak, momentary glimpses of the great idea which 
was coming into view. I say the great idea, although 
the resurrection as first conceived was limited in its scope, 
and clothed in imagery usually of a grossly material 
character. Nevertheless, it is from such a beginning 
that there has grown up all that is loftiest and purest 


174 THE PHARISEES 


in the belief in the future life, for Christians as well as 
for Jews. That height was not reached, unless by a 
very few saintly souls, in Talmudic times; but the im- 
portant fact is the emergence into consciousness of the 
belief in a future life at all. That marked a change from 
a vague hope to a definite expectation, a sudden ray of 
heavenly light into the dim region of Sheol, the assurance 
that the departure thither at death was not the final end. 
It is not wonderful that, once the idea had been suggested, 
it was rapidly developed into a firm belief, for it satished 
a spiritual want which had only come to be keenly felt 
under the influence of the Pharisaic teaching, and its 
insistence upon the supreme importance of religion. 
Henceforth, in Pharisaism and Rabbinical Judaism the 
twofold belief in the resurrection of the dead and the 
coming of the Messiah held its place and holds it still, 
although the contents of that belief have been conceived 
in different ways at different times and by different 
teachers. The belief has been set forth with an extravagant 
abundance of detail, drawn from various sources, Persian 
and other, or simply from the imagination of the writer. 
Even when all these are laboriously arranged and classified 
and compared by scholars, as is done in most books which 
deal with the subject, little or nothing is gained for the 
better understanding of the real significance of the under- 
lying belief. Doubtless such things served to impress 
the hearers, and give to the imagination what the reason 
was not trained to receive in abstract terms.. There was 
endless room for inventive fancy, in picturing the incidents 
of the coming of the Messiah, his overthrow of the world 
powers of evil, the length of his reign, the bliss of the 
righteous and the punishment of the wicked, and the 
other topics which are included in eschatology. Doubtless, 
also, these things were eagerly listened to and immensely 
popular; but, for all that, the real significance of the 
belief was that it gave a new meaning to the fundamental 
belief in the eternal God, Holy and Just and True, a new 
meaning to Israel’s passionate devotion to Him and entire 
consecration to His service; a new meaning to the hope 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 175 


which dwells in the inmost heart of Judaism. In the 
course of ages, the outward trappings of the belief have 
been cast aside; but the hope has remained, and the 
belief founded on it has taken on diviner forms and a 
loftier meaning. The ancient prophet had declared, in 
the name of God, the great word, “‘ All souls are mine”’ 
(Ezek. xviii. 4). The Pharisees took up the word, and 
taught something of what it meant; and they opened 
the way along which, to the human race and not to Jews 
only, hhas come the vision of life hereafter of immortal 
souls in the nearer presence of God. 

With this I conclude the survey of Pharisaic theology 
comprised in this and the preceding chapter. I have 
intentionally refrained from going into details, because 
it seemed of greater importance to set forth the main 
lines along which the Pharisees and the Rabbis laid out 
their conceptions of divine things. The details are in- 
numerable, and there was never any requirement that 
they should be mutually consistent. What the Rabbis 
said upon the chief subjects of belief was what they had 
the wisdom or the imagination or the insight to say, 
each as he best could. Where they were all at one was 
in their belief in the One God, the sole supreme Lord, 
who had called them to His service and given them in 
the Torah the revelation of His nature and His will. 
Halachah and Haggadah together are their reading of 
the meaning of Torah. And the whole of Jewish life, 
on the lines first traced by the Pharisees, is the answer, 
wrought into actual deed into the very fabric of life, 
to the challenge of the Torah, the call of God to Israel 
to be His witness to the world. Wherefore, the greatest 
of all the watchwords of Judaism is: ‘‘ Hear, O Israel, 
the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul and with all thy might.” 


CHAPTER VII 


PHARISAISM AND THE APOCRYPHAL 
LITERATURE 


No account of Pharisaism would be complete which 
omitted to deal with the question of the relation between 
that body of teaching and the Apocryphal, more particu- 
larly the Apocalyptic literature. The profound study of 
this literature, which has been made by eminent scholars 
in recent years, renders it unnecessary to survey it in 
detail; but the conclusions drawn by some of those 
scholars, after minute examination of the Apocryphal 
literature, would be of more value if they were based 
upon a corresponding knowledge of the Rabbinical litera- 
ture. For the exposition, indeed, of the positive contents 
of the Apocryphal books, their religious and ethical 
conceptions, to say nothing of questions as to their date 
and authorship, such self-contained study is sufficient, 
and has produced results of great value. But more is 
needed if the Apocryphal literature is to be shown in its 
true relation to the other elements in contemporary 
Judaism, in particular to Pharisaism. The Apocryphal 
literature is readily accessible and easily read by every 
Greek scholar, and for practical purposes by those who 
know no Greek but have access to the great Oxford edition. 
The Rabbinical literature is not easily accessible, still less 
easily read, still less easily understood when it is read. 
But read and understood it has got to be if the Judaism 
of the early centuries before and after the common era is 


to be truly portrayed. 
196 


THE APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE 177 


It may have occurred to the reader of the foregoing 
pages to ask why the Apocryphal literature has not been 
there referred to and used as evidence for the illustration 
and explanation of Pharisaism? It was a contemporary 
literature, for there were Pharisees (in fact if not yet in 
name) when the Book of Jubilees was written, and there 
were Pharisees after [IV Ezra was written. Moreover, the 
contents of the Apocryphal books have a greater resem- 
blance to some elements at least in Pharisaism than to 
any Sadducean ideas or even to those of the Essenes, for 
which a better case might be made out. We need not 
consider a Sadducean or Essene affinity for the Apocryphal 
literature. That was not Sadducean, and probably not 
Essene. It has, indeed, been generally assumed that it was 
Pharisaic. Why then not use it ? 

It is a fact, known to every Rabbinical scholar that, 
whatever the reason, the Apocalyptic type of writing is 
only very scantily represented in the Rabbinical literature. 
There was plenty of occasion for such topics and such 
treatment of them, if there had been the desire to introduce 
them. What there is of such material in the Talmud and 
the Midrashim (at all events the earlier ones) is but small 
in amount, and not for a moment to be compared with the 
elaborate works like the chief Apocryphal books. There 
must have been some reason for this, though for the 
moment I do not offer any suggestion as to what the 
reason might be. And the reason must have been strong 
enough to warrant the leaders of Pharisaism in leaving 
those books out of the Canon of Holy Scripture; a point 
on which more will be said presently. Since, therefore, 
it is obviously the duty of the scholar who studies 


: The two passages richest in Apocalyptic material to be found 
in the Talmud are b. Hagg. ii and Sanh. x (xi). To which may be 
added M. Sotah ix. There are some few other passages quite short, 
as b. Ber. 7* (according to Zunz, Gott. Vorty. 164, later than the 
Gemara), b. Joma 10%, b. Shebu. 6°. These certainly include the 
most important Apocalyptic passages in the Talmud, and they 
are’ only trifling in amount compared with the whole mass of the 
Talmud. The disproportion is very striking and significant, 

12 


178 THE PHARISEES 


Pharisaism to go in the first instance to the literature 
which embodies their own teaching of their own principles, 
and since that literature discloses ideas with which the 
Apocryphal literature, for whatever reason, was not 
wholly congenial, it would not be justifiable to use the 
latter as evidence for the character of Pharisaism. To 
say that the Apocryphal, and still more the Apocalyptic, 
writings were the work of Pharisees is a pure assumption, 
only to be explained by the idea that every writer who 
displays a profound veneration for Torah was necessarily 
a Pharisee. I shall hope to show that that assumption 
is mistaken, chiefly on the ground that Pharisaism had 
main principles which could not find natural expression 
in such literary forms. 

I have, therefore, in the preceding chapters, tried to 
describe Pharisaism as the Pharisees intended it, and 
expressed its meaning in their own literature. If I have 
failed, there is nothing more to be said, and the work must 
be done again by some more competent hand. But if 
I have not failed, then the Pharisaism so portrayed is the 
standard by which to judge of approximations to it such 
as are found in the Apocryphal literature, and still more 
such unfavourable representations of it as are contained 
in the New Testament. These latter I shall consider in 
the next chapter. My task in the present is to consider 
the relation between the Pharisaism already ascertained, 
as I believe with substantial truth, and the body of religious 
ideas and conceptions set forth in the Apocrypha] literature. 

One point may be dismissed in very few words. I have 
heard the opinion expressed that the Pharisees did not 
know the Apocryphal and Apocalyptic writings at all. I 
cannot share that opinion. For it is beyond question 
that those writings were widely read and extremely popular. 
If they had been only obscure productions, meeting no 
real or even imaginary want, they would not have been 
translated into other languages as they were. All, or 
nearly all, were translated into Greek, and Greek could 
be read by someone in all parts of the then known world. 
Moreover some, and perhaps most, were originally written 


THE APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE 179 


in Hebrew; and it is not probable that the Pharisaic 
teachers would or could be ignorant of books written for 
a religious purpose in the sacred language. In the case 
of Ben Sira it is beyond a doubt that they knew the book 
well, as there are several quotations from it in the 
Talmud. They may, and probably did, disapprove of 
the others; but they could not disapprove without 
knowing something of what they disapproved. And why 
should Ben Sira be the only book known to them out of 
the many which in fact shared its fate? The Mishnah 
(Sanh. x. I) says that R. Akiba included amongst those 
who had no part in the world to come “‘him who reads 
in the external books.’’ It is not, indeed, stated what 
those ‘external books’ were, and it only amounts to a 
declaration that there were external books, and that the 
reading of them was disapproved. R. Akiba, who made 
that declaration, knew very well what Apocalyptic was ; 
and if he made his famous entry into Paradise (b. Hagg. 14°) 
whatever that may really mean, he did not do it for 
nothing. He was the only Rabbi of importance who took 
a leading part in the War of Bar Cocheba, which was 
entirely a Messianic effort, inspired by Apocalyptic ideas 
of which Akiba himself was the most distinguished preacher. 
If such a man denounced the reading of ‘ external books,’ 
he could hardly have been ignorant of writings with whose 
teaching he was, from some points of view, in such close 
agreement. If, on the other hand, it be still maintained 
that he knew nothing about them, then how strange is 
that ignorance in a man who had travelled even as far as 
Ginzak in Media, who had visited Africa and been in 
Rome. 

I put aside, therefore, as wholly improbable, the view 
that the Apocryphal literature was unknown to the 
Pharisaic leaders, and proceed to the examination of the 
question, now become actual, What was their relation to 
it ? 

The known writings of this class were produced in a 
period extending from the Maccabean Revolt, when the 
Book of Daniel was written, to some time after the capture 


180 THE PHARISEES 


of Jerusalem, 70 C.E., an event which is implied in IV Ezra. 
The lower limit may be extended without affecting the 
argument. For the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Enoch, 
the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Psalms of 
Solomon and IV Ezra fall within the period specified, 
and they will supply sufficient material for a conclusion. 
It may be freely admitted that the Apocalyptic literature 
is founded on the prophetic writings, ‘‘ the true child of 
prophecy,” in Charles’s picturesque phrase (Pref. to his 
edition of Enoch, 1912). Whether the only child is 
another matter. The prophetic writings, e.g. Joel, 
Deutero-Isaiah, Haggai, Malachi contain enough to show 
clearly where the Apocalyptic writers got their ideas 
from, and whom they took as their models. What 
prompted them to write in this manner can only be 
guessed; but it seems reasonable to suppose that the 
later writers wished to do for their own age what the 
Prophets had done in the older time. No doubt they 
did their best, with a high purpose and a genuine desire 
to help their readers. But a prophet cannot be made to 
order, and no amount of study and imitation of prophetic 
models will bring the divine afflatus. The Apocalyptic 
writings make but a poor show beside the words of the 
great Prophets. It is held by Charles (loc. cit.) that 
the ‘‘absolute autocracy of the Law... made the 
utterance of God-sent prophetic men impossible, except 
through the medium of pseudepigraphs, some of which, 
like Daniel, gained an entrance, despite the Law, into the 
Old Testament Canon.” It is no doubt true that the 
‘Law’ did acquire a supreme place in the Judaism of 
the centuries since Ezra. But, if there had been, during 
those centuries, any real prophets who felt that they 
had a word of the Lord to declare, they would have 
declared it. Who would have prevented them ? Certainly 
not .the ‘Law,’ nor those who expounded it. Rather, 
who could have prevented them ? Amos said what he had 
to say in spite of the priest and the king; and, if there 
had been an Amos in the centuries now in question, he 
would have spoken his word regardless of Pharisee or 


THE APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE 181 


Scribe, in the very unlikely case of their wishing to prevent 
him. Also, if there had been a second-century Amos, 
there would have been some trace of him. But there is 
no trace. The Pharisees recognised the fact that prophecy 
had come to an end, and drew their own conclusion from 
that fact. And the Apocalyptic writings are a witness, 
not to “ the tyranny of the Law,’’ but to the feebleness of 
those who <cspired to wear the mantle of Elijah. If their 
writings had appeared under their own names, it is quite 
conceivable that no attention would have been paid to 
them; their device of introducing their works under the 
shelter of great names—Enoch, Moses, Solomon, Ezra— 
was one which men of original genius would not have 
needed nor condescended to use. Did John the Baptist 
fear “‘ the tyranny of the Law,” or let it prevent him from 
delivering his message ? Yet he spoke without concealment 
of his own identity, and there was never any doubt about 
his gaining a hearing. The Apocryphal writers included 
neither an Amos nor a John the Baptist, else they would 
not have written anonymously. Their works bear out 
this opinion, for their want of original power is conspicuous. 
They are obviously based on the prophetic writings ; and, 
what is more, the peculiar type of Apocalyptic writing is 
repeated in its main features over and over again. It 
is true that they contain some ideas which were not directly 
due to the Prophets, e.g., the belief in immortality ; and 
they worked out the details of their eschatology far beyond 
the range of the prophetic vision. Also, as in the Testa- 
ments on the Twelve Patriarchs, the ethical standard is 
very high; and if the ethical teaching be not purer it is 
certainly more fully developed than that of the Prophets. 
I am by no means contending that the Apocryphal, and 
more particularly the non-Apocalyptic, writings are devoid 
of religious and moral value. I am contending that the 
want of original power in their writers gives a sufficient 
explanation of the manner of their appearance and the 
nature of their contents. 

These writings, with the one exception of the Book of 
Daniel, were not included in the Canon of Holy Scripture. 


182 THE PHARISEES 


It is affirmed that this exclusion was due to “ the tyranny 
of the Law,” and that only the Book of Daniel managed 
to gain a place in the Canon, in spite of that tyranny. 
(Charles, loc. cit.) That, with the one exception men- 
tioned, they were excluded from the Canon is true, and 
that the supreme influence of the Torah had a good deal 
to do with their exclusion is also true, though I hold that 
the phrase “‘the tyranny of the Law” is an incorrect 
description of that influence. Yet, accepting it for the 
moment, I would ask, Is it not strange that a book which 
contains so much Torah as Jubilees, should be rejected 
through the tyranny of the Torah itself? The whole 
book is in form a Midrash on Genesis, and the writer is so 
loyal in his devotion to Torah that he is usually supposed 
to have been a Pharisee. Why should the Scribes reject 
a Pharisee ? The same may be said of the other Apocryphal 
books; there is enough of devotion to Torah expressed or 
implied in them to suggest some other explanation of their 
exclusion from the Canon than “the tyranny of the Law,” 
and some other account of their authorship than that they 
were the work of Pharisees. I go on, therefore, to investi- 
gate these further questions. 

Apart from the Apocalyptic passages in the Prophets, 
the Book of Daniel is the first known example of this 
special type of writing. It appeared in close connection 
with the Maccabean Revolt. What its actual effect was 
can only be guessed, but it is reasonable to suppose that 
such a book appearing at such a time would produce a 
great impression and do much to encourage and inspire 
the nation in its resistance to Hellenism. Now the Book 
of Daniel was a new thing, a type of writing which till 
then was unknown. To that extent, its author was a 
man of original power; he saw and supplied what was 
wanted in the circumstances of his time, and presumably 
found an eager hearing for his message. His book was 
allowed a place in the Canon of Holy Scripture, though not 
among the Prophets. The reason may have been, as 
usually said, that the Canon of the Prophets was already 
closed. Yet that is not a wholly conclusive reason; for 


THE TEACHING OF THE PHARISEES 188 


those who, in the first century c.E., debated whether 
Ezekiel should be reckoned as in the Canon or not 
(b. Shabb. 13°) could no doubt have included Daniel among 
the Prophets if they had seen reason to do so. In the 
Greek Canon, indeed, Daniel was included among the 
Prophets, as he still is in the Christian Bible; but that 
is not to say that he held that place in the Pharisaic 
Canon. If at the first he did, then all the more remarkable 
is his subsequent relegation to a place only amongst the 
Hagiographa. However this may be, the Book of Daniel 
did get into the Canon; and if it be said that this was 
because the author wrote under an assumed name, on 
what ground were the other pseudepigraphs excluded, 
whose authors wrote under names which carried greater 
weight than that of the apparently hardly known Daniel ? 
The reason why it was included may be only that it was a 
book which had a profound effect at a critical time, and 
could not well be excluded. Moreover, since it was the 
the first of its kind, any grounds of objection felt later 
towards imitations of its peculiar form and manner would 
not at once have become definite. One might say that 
Daniel took his position by storm, and that later attempts 
to repeat his exploit failed. 

Why did they fail? That question goes to the heart of 
the matter. To find the answer, or such answer as is 
possible, we must recall from Chapter II the history of 
the time beginning with the Maccabean Revolt. That 
event was an uprising of the adherents of Torah against 
the Hellenists. The victory meant the triumph of the 
Torah, and the conquerors were, to a man, fervent in their 
allegiance to it. But not all in the nation were of the 
type to which afterwards the name Pharisee was applied. 
When that name came into use, it was borne only by. a 
small fraction of the nation, some six thousand in all, 
according to Josephus, writing of his own time. Which 
means that there could be, and was, enthusiasm for Torah 
on other lines besides those of the Pharisees. Now any- 
one who wrote a book, at all events a religious book, in 
such a time must of necessity have written from the 


184 THE PHARISEES 


standpoint of devotion to Torah. If we knew more of 
the details of this period, we should probably find a con- 
siderable variety of types amongst those writers who 
represented the Judaism of their time. We do not know 
all the details, but when we find books like Enoch 
and Jubilees, written wholly or partly in the period 
under discussion, we are not on that account entitled to 
call them Pharisaic, but ought to regard them as repre- 
senting one amongst various types of religious thought 
then present in Judaism, and by no means necessarily 
to be identified with Pharisaism. Of course there was a 
good deal of common ground, since all united on Torah ; 
but there were differences nevertheless quite sufficient 
to mark a distinction. I am not saying that when 
Enoch, or Jubilees, appeared it was received with dis- 
favour by the Pharisees, for I do not know. It is likely 
enough that when those books appeared they would be 
read with eagerness by all who could read, and that 
objections on the part of the Pharisees would only gradually 
become definite. The books were certainly of a kind to 
be popular; they were easy to read, they were full of 
Torah, they stimulated curiosity, they had a flavour of 
mystery in them, they professed to disclose secrets, both 
of earth and heaven, and they pleased the sense of national 
pride in being the chosen people, whose God would triumph 
over their enemies and his. Such a literature, whether 
represented by Enoch and Jubilees or by later works, 
could not fail to make a strong appeal to its public; 
as indeed is shown in the fact that so many Apocalyptic 
writings appeared in which the main ideas and forms of 
description recur with so little variety. Even IV Ezra, 
with its mournful and despairing tones, yet keeps to the 
conventional lines of Apocalyptic description. -It would 
seem that the popular taste was never satiated with 
this kind of religious nourishment, notwithstanding its 
abundance and its want of variety. 

But in spite of their popularity, very natural under the 
circumstances, these books did not find a place in the 
Canon of Holy Scripture as that was arranged under 


THE APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE 185 


Pharisaic guidance. If they did at first, and there is no 
evidence so far as I know to show that they ever did, 
they lost that place when the Canon was finally closed. 
Now it is perfectly true that the Pharisaic opinion about 
these books is nowhere expressly defined. So far as I 
am. aware they are nowhere mentioned in the Talmud or 
the Midrashim. We can only judge from the known 
principles of the Pharisees what that opinion was likely to 
be. That it was unfavourable goes without saying ; 
so much follows from the mere fact of final exclusion of 
these books from the Canon. But it will be remembered 
that the Pharisees placed before everything else the doing 
of the divine will; their aim was to apply a moral and 
religious discipline in order to train the people to live 
as the people of God ought to live. They taught and 
elaborated the Halachah for this main purpose. The 
Halachah was intended to be the means towards the 
consecration of life, the discipline of the will, the guidance 
of action. And though the Haggadah was its indispens- 
able accompaniment, yet it was the Halachah which, so to 
speak, gave the word of command. Now the Apocryphal, 
and especially the Apocalyptic, books were by no 
means on the lines of Halachah, and seemed to havea 
different end in view. They were not unlike Haggadah, 
and yet not quite the same. Even if they had been, no 
Pharisee would admit for a moment that Haggadah was 
sufficient without Halachah. It was the peculiar genius 
of Pharisaism that developed them both, and that put 
Halachah first. If the Pharisees had admitted the Apo- 
cryphal books to Canonical authority, they would have 
undermined their whole position, and taken the driving 
force out of their own teaching. They may have been 
right or they may have been wrong, though for my part 
I believe they were entirely right; but, from their own 
point of view and on their own principles, they could not 
do other than they did, in looking with disfavour upon 
these books. That the books could have been written by 
Pharisees is a contradiction in terms. 

The explanation here offered, of the exclusion of the 


186 THE PHARISEES 


books in question, has this also in its favour that it applies 
to all the Apocryphal books and not alone to those which 
are specifically Apocalyptic. For there is not one of 
them in which the Halachah is mentioned, still less 
its fundamental authority recognised. The comparisons 
between the older and the later Halachah, suggested by 
Charles in his edition to Jubilees are in the notes, 
not in the text; the author of Jubilees said nothing 
about Halachah, and, if he had intended to do so, he 
would have expressed himself very differently. If the 
Apocryphal literature alone had been preserved and the 
Rabbinical literature perished, little or nothing would 
have been known of Halachah or of the Pharisees who 
created it. The former would have remained to represent 
some prominent types of contemporary Judaism, and 
no one would have had any reason to identify them with 
the vanished and unknown Pharisees. But, as the Rab- 
binical literature exists in enormous amount, the conclusion 
to be drawn is not that its authors are to be identified with 
those of the Apocryphal literature, but that they represent 
another of the prominent types of contemporary Judaism. 
All had common ground in the Torah, and in a varying 
degree in their ethical conceptions; but the Pharisees 
stood apart from the others in their definite affirmation 
of the Halachah, and the religious and moral conceptions 
which they intended it to express. 

This I hold to be the fundamental and irreconcilable 
difference which marks off the Pharisaic from the 
Apocryphal literature, But it is not the only one, and 
I go on to show what further reason there was why 
the Pharisees should look with disapproval upon that 
literature. If I am right, the explanation will throw 
some light on the real character of the Apocalyptic 
writings, though not necessarily of the others. 

It has been shown in Chapter II that the Pharisees 
were in the main a non-political party, whose chief aim 
was to ensure the peaceful exercise of religion. From 
the time when the Maccabean princes began to develop 
the political side of their victory, down to the final over- 


THE APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE 187 


throw of the Jewish State in the War of Bar Cocheba, 
the Pharisees had stood aloof from politics so far as they 
could, and in all the troubles which threatened or resulted 
in war, they had been consistently on the side of peace. 
We have seen, also, that gradually, under the pressure of 
adversity and especially the cruelties of Herod, a protest 
was made against the passivism of the Pharisees by the 
party to whom the name of Zealots was given. The 
main division of the nation in regard to Torah, at the 
beginning of the last century B.c.E., was that between 
Pharisees and Sadducees; but looked at more closely 
this appears as a division between the Sadducees on the 
one side and a composite group on the other, of whom the 
Pharisees were the most conspicuous member, though not 
the most numerous. All in this composite group, com- 
prising the majority of the nation, were united by devotion 
to Torah, and to that extent were in close agreement with 
the Pharisees. But other tendencies and types of thought 
were also represented, and gradually found expression. 
There were those who disagreed with the peace policy 
of the Pharisees and finally broke away from it, becoming 
the party of the Zealots. They were as zealous for the 
Torah as any Pharisees, but they could no longer be 
content to defend it by peaceful submission. They were 
ready to fight for it, against its enemies and those of God— 
the heathen oppressors whose yoke lay heavy on the 
neck of Israel. They longed for the day when the Gentile, 
Roman or any other, should be overthrown and when 
God should establish His kingdom on earth. Now it was 
persecution, no doubt, and oppression which gave the 
occasion for such ideas to become articulate and pass 
from word to deed. But it is clear that the material 
for them lay ready to hand in the pseudo-prophetic, 
Apocalyptic writings. These had much to say about 
the final overthrow of the Gentile world, the deliverance 
and victory of the Saints, effected by the intervention 
of God himself through the Messiah. They showed the 
future bliss of the righteous and the torments of the wicked, 
and drew both pictures in bold lines and glaring colours. 


188 THE PHARISEES 


They were full of religious zeal, but it was the religion of 
fanatics, in which sincere piety was allied to hatred, and 
the sacred consciousness of being the chosen people of 
God became a bitter national pride—blind, fierce and 
cruel. The Apocalyptic writings are full of such ideas; 
and the fervent devotion of the writers to their religion, 
the lofty aspirations which they utter, the zeal for holiness 
which they display, cannot disguise the baser elements 
which are mingled in their thought and feeling, the spirit 
of hate and vengeance which darkens the whole. In a 
word, the Apocalyptic literature is Zealot literature. It 
shows the inspiration, the ideas and religious and ethical 
conceptions of the Zealot Movement, alike on its good 
side, for it had a good side, and on its bad side, its very 
bad side. The Apocalyptic literature and the Zealot 
Movement went hand in hand, the one providing the 
dangerous food and the other feasting on it and calling 
for more. Of course there was excuse, if not justification, 
for the Zealot Movement in the suffering of an oppressed 
people, driven to fury by a Herod or a Gessius Florus. 
In a sense it was only natural that such treatment should 
have such results. But that is not a reason for saying 
that the literature which embodies the ideas of the Zealot 
Movement was noble or beautiful or sublime. If it echoes 
some, but not all, of the tones of the ancient Prophets, it 
breathes a very different spirit ; and if Apocalyptic were 
indeed ‘‘ the true child of prophecy,” it is permissible to 
doubt whether the parent would recognise the child, or 
care to acknowledge the paternity. 

Now the Zealots were an offshoot from the Pharisees, or, 
more correctly, a branch of the original Torah stock which 
had grown on other than the Pharisaic lines. The 
Pharisees never coalesced with the Zealots, and only under 
stress of circumstances shared in the war against Vespasian. 
Even then they were the peace party, and would have 
avoided war if they could. This is evident from the 
example of R. Simeon b. Gamliel during the siege of 
Jerusalem, and R. Johanan b. Zaccai and his colleagues 
after it. In the last great war, the Pharisaic leaders, with 


THE APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE 189 


only a few exceptions, stood aloof. R. Akiba, certainly 
the greatest of all the leaders, was almost the only one to 
greet and support the Messianic king, Simeon Bar Cocheba. 
The whole Zealot Movement was contrary to the ground 
principles of Pharisaism. The Pharisees, for all the 
respect they enjoyed as the religious leaders of the people, 
could not stem the furious rage of the Zealots. Is it then 
in the least degree probable that they should have approved 
the writings which inspired and fostered the Zealot Move- 
ment, or should have recognised as Holy Scripture books 
which taught, along with devotion to Torah, a religion 
and an ethic widely different from their own, a religion 
which adored a God of vengeance and an ethic which 
turned the hand of the Jew against his fellow-man if the 
fellow-man was a Gentile? The Pharisees had their faults, 
doubtless; but they stood for nobler ideals than these. 
Truly, their fate has been a hard one, at the hands of 
the world. Not alone have they been branded for nine- 
teen centuries as hypocrites, but they have been made to 
bear the blame of all that is repulsive in the Apocalyptic 
writings, whose whole spirit was repugnant to them. 

In expressing the opinion here offered of the Pharisaic 
disapproval of the Apocalyptic, i.e. Zealot literature, I 
do not forget that some of its elements are to be found 
in Pharisaism also ; for instance, the belief in the resurrec- 
tion and in the coming of the Messiah, beliefs which are 


t The latest instance of this is to be seen in The Lord of Thought, 
by McDougall and Emmet. It is there taken for granted, owing 
to an entire ignorance of the Rabbinical literature, that the Apoca- 
lyptic writings represent the ideas of the Pharisees; whereas the 
_ Pharisees would have agreed with all, or nearly all, that is said 
there by way of condemnation of Apocalyptic, both on its religious 
and its moral side. There was in the synagogues and the schools 
a far higher and nobler teaching, though no doubt the Apocalyptic 
style made a more telling appeal than the austere simplicity and 
the severe moral challenge of Pharisaism. Jesus himself must have 
been perfectly well aware of this ; and he showed it in his own teach- 
ing. That had much in common with the Pharisaic teaching, 
though it was based on a different principle. But that he should 
have stooped to the low level of Apocalyptic, as seems to be thought 
by many scholars, is to me inconceivable. 


190 THE PHARISEES 


very prominent in the Apocalyptic literature. In the 
presentation of those beliefs, the Pharisees, for anything 
I know to the contrary, would not be averse from using 
such figures and illustrations as those which abound in 
the Apocalyptic books. Examples can be found in the 
Talmud and the Midrashim. And if the Apocalyptic books 
had contained nothing more, the Pharisees would have 
had no reason, on this ground, to object to them. 5o, too, 
the Pharisees believed in the coming of the Messiah, to 
set up the kingdom of God upon earth. But they differed 
from the Zealots in holding that belief as a pious hope, 
not as a call to action. The Messiah would come, when it 
pleased God to send him; it was not for man to try and 
force the hand of God, or even to inquire curiously when 
the great day should be. The action of the Zealots was 
an attempt so to force the hand of God, and the Apocalyptic 
literature inflamed them with the desire to make the 
attempt. There would have been no particular harm in 
the Apocalyptic books if they could have been kept free 
from the spirit of national pride and vindictive hatred 
which finds expression in them along with their nobler 
aspirations. The Pharisees condemned alike the literature 
which fostered such a spirit and the men who acted in 
accordance with it. They could not stop the men from 
dragging the nation to its ruin; but they could and did 
refuse a place to that pernicious literature in the Canon 
of Holy Scripture. 

It is, of course, true that the Apocalyptic literature 
has maintained its popularity, not only in Christian, but 
also in Jewish circles till far down in the Middle Ages, and 
has served to keep hope alive in dark times of suffering. 
I say “ of course’’ because I am not prepared to deny the 


t See b. Sanh. 97», where there is a-good deal about calculating 
the time when the Son of David, ie. the Messiah, should come. 
Several examples are given, based upon Habb. ii. 3. Then is given 
the dictum of R. Jonathan, reported by R. Samuel b. Nahmani, 
““ may they perish who calculate ends; for they said, As soon as 
the end is reached and He has not come, He will not come any 


more.’ R. Jonathan (b. Eleazar) was a Palestinian pe 5 about 
the end of the third century C.E£. 


THE APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE 191 


assertion. Yet, allowing that hope has been kept alive 
or revived by such means, how often has the flame died 
down and the hope been disappointed! Apocalyptic is 
full of promises, but it has never kept one of them. Its 
immediate effect may have been exhilaration, but it has 
left despair behind it. And if Judaism had not held in 
its heart a nobler faith and a stronger trust, a deep passion 
of devotion to the will of God, not all the Apocalyptic 
that ever was written would have sufficed to keep it alive. 
Apocalyptic uses the words of hope but its message is 
despair, despair of all human means for establishing the 
kingdom of God on earth, the anxious longing for God to 
intervene and the distrust of the slow waiting for His 
purpose to be fulfilled, the hasty casting of the responsi- . 
bility for the future of the world upon God and the dis- 
owning of His command to serve Him in the passing time. 
All these find voice in Apocalyptic, as it was only natural 
they should; but that does not alter the character of the 
literature which expresses them. The Pharisees and the 
Rabbis set their faces against all that, being well able to 
see the effects of it in their own time. They saw the two 
great wars against Rome, both probably and certainly 
the last inspired by Apocalyptic ideas. And if they had 
wanted an example to give point to their disapproval 
they had one ready to their hand in IV Ezra, written 
soon after the fall of Jerusalem in the first war. To read 
that book is to understand the close connection between 
Apocalyptic and despair. It is indeed a mournful book, 
and the writer plainly indicates his perplexity that devo- 
tion to Torah should have ended in such colossal disaster. 
But to saythatIV Ezra represents the answer of Pharisaism 
to the problem presented by that disaster is to go about 
as far from the truth as is possible. The answer of 
Pharisaism is precisely what IV Ezra does not give. The 
answer of defeated and disheartened Zealots, yes; but 
the answer of Pharisees, never. The Pharisees had not 
shared in those wild hopes; and, though they grieved for 
Jerusalem, as every Jew must do, they did not feel the 
Same crushing weight of despair. Their answer, in effect 


192 THE PHARISEES 


if not in words, was to take up again their old task of 
building up the religious life of the people, a task which 
the war had made for the time impossible, to keep Israel 
together as the holy nation set to do the will of God, now 
that the political dream of triumphant nationality had 
been shattered. The Zealots had twice broken loose, and 
twice their effort had ended in utter failure. The Pharisees 
had done what they could to cherish a nobler hope, and a 
truer faith in God than that which found utterance in 
Apocalyptic, and made mad fanatics of the Zealots. They 
could only wait till the storm had spent itself, and then 
bind up the wounds and share the sufferings of their 
people. They preached again, and practised, the serving 
of God in the daily doing of His will; and it is highly 
significant that the two centuries which saw the final 
discomfiture of the Zealots saw, at their close, the com- 
pletion of the Mishnah, the official declaration of the 
Halachah. That book, for those who can understand, is 
the real answer of Pharisaism to the problem of Israel’s 
twofold overthrow. The Mishnah, the embodiment of 
Pharisaic devotion to the will of God, conceived in their 
own characteristic manner, built up on the foundation of 
a living faith and an unconquerable trust, the Mishnah, 
and not IV Ezra or any of its kind, represents the life and 
soul of Judaism, its answer to the counsels of despair and 
the futile wailing of disheartened visionaries. This is 
obvious to those who know the inner spirit of the Rabbinical 
literature in general, and of the Mishnah in particular. 
And it is just because they did know it that Jewish 
scholars have usually placed the Rabbinical far above 
the Apocalyptic literature as representing the real and 
essential Judaism of the time. Of course Apocalyptic 
represented one type of Jewish thought and belief preva- 
lent in that age, and for that reason deserves to be studied, 
just as the Sadducee, the Essene and the Am-ha-aretz 
deserve to be studied, if only the necessary material 
existed for such study. But when it is a question of 
relative worth and importance, then it is only those who 
know but little of the Rabbinical literature and who have 


THE APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE 193 


not read its deeper meaning, who will give any high place 
or worth to the Apocalyptic literature in comparison 
with that of the Pharisees. Child of prophecy in some 
sense it doubtless was, as there are children and children ; 
but the true child was that Halachah in which the Pharisees 
sought to apply in the act of the conscious will the faith 
and devotion of the Prophets. 

I have tried to show that in regard to the Apocalyptic 
literature there was a fundamental difference of principle 
which made it impossible that the Pharisees should regard 
it with approval. But in regard to others of the Apocryphal 
books there was no such fundamental ground of objection. 
The Psalms of Solomon and the Testaments of the Twelve 
Patriarchs (omitting the Christian additions) may very 
well have been the work of Pharisees. Why they were 
excluded from the Canon of Scripture I do not know, nor 
do I know if there was ever any suggestion that they should 
be included. After all, perhaps no other reason need be 
sought than the one usually given, that they appeared too 
late in time to be added to a Canon which was regarded as 
virtually, if not finally, closed. 

As to the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, I gladly 
accept the judgment of Charles (Oxford Apocrypha II, 
p. 293) that the book “shows that pre-Christian Judaism 
possessed a noble system of ethics on the subject of 
forgiveness. By the early school of the Hasidim, or the 
pious ones of the Psalms, the best elements of the Old 
Testament had been taken up, studied and developed, and 
the highly ethical code of conduct deduced therefrom had 
been carried out in actual life by these ancient Quietists.” 
That is admirably put, though it should be remembered 
that if these Hasidim be identical with the ‘“‘ pious ones”’ 
of the Psalms, they, too, could ‘‘ indulge in resentful feelings 
or even in personal vengeance ”’ (loc. cit.). 

But Charles follows up the statement just quoted with 
another, which in my judgment presents an entirely wrong 
view of the nature and the development of Pharisaism. 
He says: “ But when Pharisaism, breaking with the 
ancient ideals of its party, committed itself to political 

‘13 


194 THE PHARISEES 


interests and movements, and concurrently therewith 
surrendered itself more and more wholly to the study of 
the letter of the Law, it soon ceased to offer scope for such 
a lofty system of ethics as the Testaments attest, and so 
the true successors of the Hasids and their teaching 
quitted Judaism and found their natural home in the 
bosom of primitive Christianity.’ Pharisaism did not 
break with the ancient ideals of its party, though it may 
have adopted other ways of realising those ideals. Neither 
did Pharisaism at any time ‘commit itself to political 
interests and movements.’’ Of course, as the Pharisees 
were not recluses, they could not help being involved 
in the political turmoil in whose midst they lived; but 
that was wholly against their will, and that exactly marks 
their difference with the Zealots, who showed what 
Pharisaism would have been turned into if ever it had 
become political, Neither is it true that Pharisaism 
‘“‘ devoted itself more and more wholly to the study of 
the letter of the Law.’’ What the Pharisees did do in 
that respect, and how strenuously they sought the spirit 
behind the letter, and therefore prized the letter as indi- 
cating the spirit, has been shown in Chapter III; and if the 
assertion at present under discussion be true, then that 
chapter, and indeed this whole book, have been written 
in vain. What is true is that the Pharisees devised 
and developed the Halachah as a religious and moral 
‘discipline. They did not use the method of written 
treatises, they chose the method of practical action under 
guidance and instruction. And they got very substantial 
results from their methods, by way of moral and religious 
development of the character of the people, at least of 
those who followed and obeyed their teaching. The written 
treatise, in this case the Testaments, certainly does contain 
a noble ethic, but not nobler than that which the Pharisaic 
literature also contains. Which, indeed, is not wonderful 
if a Pharisee wrote the Testaments. Certainly, the book 
passed over into Christian use, and found a welcome there. 
Whether it remained as a subject of Jewish study I do not 
know; but, whatever became of the book, the ethical 


THE APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE 195 


teaching it contained did not quit Judaism. The Pharisees 
had their own way of arriving at the same results, and 
found all they needed in the Torah, interpreted as they 
interpreted it. When the Christian Church arose, it 
repudiated the method of the Halachah, which indeed 
was not capable of being applied to Gentiles. But the 
need for ethical teaching had to be supplied; and it is 
only natural that the Apocryphal books of an ethical 
character should meet that need and be adapted to that 
use by teachers who had broken with the Pharisaic way. 
How much real effect they had in the practical discipline 
of character when applied to Christians is another matter 
altogether. It is easy to read a book and say how beautiful 
it is, how pure and lofty its teaching. The Pharisees 
would not be content with anything less than the doing of 
right acts and the refraining from wrong ones; and they 
did not get this out of books, however excellent. | 
It may be that this really is what underlies the Pharisaic 
attitude towards the Apocryphal books in general, apart 
from the Apocalyptic writings in particular, towards 
which there were special grounds of objection. But in 
regard to the others, while the fact remains that the 
Pharisees did not allow them a place in the Canon, and 
apparently took no particular notice of them, the reason 
may be found, not in any special objection to their teach 
ing, but in the unsuitability of written books as such to 
the Pharisaic method. They had, in the older Scriptures, 
and above all in the written Torah, all the books they 
needed ; their sole concern was to draw forth what they 
believed to be the real contents of those books. They 
were not out to construct a system of ethics or theology 
or anything else, but to study and apply the teaching 
contained in the Scripture—especially to apply it. How 
they did this has already been shown. For their purpose 
the books outside the Canon were of no use, though their 
teaching might be in itself admirable. With the practical 
result that they left those books alone. Pharisaism 
elected to stand or fall with the Halachah; that was its 
own creation, the fruit of its own peculiar genius. They 


196 THE PHARISEES 


developed the conception of Halachah to the furthest 
possible limits, and made it the central feature of their 
whole body of religious and ethical thought. The end 
and purpose of it all was action, the consecration of will 
and deed to the service of God; it placed this before 
everything else, knowing well the difficulty and danger of 
its task, yet deliberately choosing it, and with unwearied 
patience and strenuous toil fulfilling that task through 
the centuries. The choice was one which no other body of 
religious teachers has ever made, unless the teachers of 
Islam have learned from them; but the choice the 
Pharisees made places them outside the comparison with 
other religious bodies who have followed other methods. 
These others have had natural recourse to books setting 
forth religious truths or ethical principles, and have 
formulated their beliefs in doctrinal treatises. Pharisaism 
did not express itself in that way, nor feel the need to do 
so. Not till after the creative age of Pharisaism (under its 
later name of Rabbinism) had come to an end with the 
closing of the Talmud, did any treatises appear dealing 
with the chief concepts of Judaism. 

Saadiah wrote to defend Judaism against attack from 
without, not to supersede the Halachah from within ; 
and the same is true of the great writers who followed him 
in later ages. The Halachah, even when incorporated 
in the Mishnah and elucidated in the Gemara, is not a 
treatise, and is therefore not to be judged along with works 
that are specifically treatises on religion and ethics. In 
the Mishnah and the Gemara the religion and ethics are 
present in abundance, but so to speak in solution, not 
distilled out or rather precipitated into definite propositions 
and formal doctrines. It is the failure to comprehend 
this radical difference between the Halachah and other 
methods of religious and ethical teaching which makes so 
much of the current criticism of Pharisaism not merely 
unjust but irrelevant. When that difference is understood, 
then it is also seen why the Apocryphal literature, though 
interesting and important as an element in the history of 
the times to which it belongs, is of little or no value for 


THE APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE 197 


the knowledge of the real essential Judaism which alone 
survived. The Pharisees alone had got the secret of 
vitality ; they developed it in the centuries after Ezra, 
and gradually succeeded in making it supreme in Judaism. 
The Apocryphal literature represents elements which for 
one reason or another did not assimilate with Pharisaism, 
and therefore sooner or later passed into other regions of 
the religious world. If Christianity has benefited by taking 
them over, and has found spiritual nutriment in old 
Jewish Apocalypse, so much the better. It was not these 
which any Pharisee would have grudged to the Christian 
Church. It is enough that Christians should set great 
store by these ancient writings, if they really seem so 
admirable, without going out of the way to disparage the 
Pharisaism which did not share that admiration, and 
whose ways and thoughts and inner meaning no amount 
of study of the Apocryphal literature will ever disclose. 

Prophecy had two children and not one only. Like 
Jacob and Esau they parted and went their several ways. 
And as between Pharisaism and that type of thought 
represented in the Apocryphal and especially the Apoca- 
lyptic literature, so to speak Jacob and Esau, the inheri- 
tance remained with Jacob, not with Esau—Jacob who 
was called Israel, and Esau who in the Midrash orig 
Rome and the Gentile world. 


CHAPTER VIII 
PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT! 


Ir there was reason for dealing with the relation of the 
Apocryphal and Apocalyptic writings to Pharisaism only 
when the main lines of Pharisaism had been drawn on 
the witness of its own literature, there is even more reason 
for placing last of all the discussion of the questions 
raised by the presentation of Pharisaism in the New 
Testament. The Apocryphal literature expressed ideas 
wholly within the circle of Judaism, though not wholly 
within the circle of Pharisaism. But the New Testament 
expressed ideas the most important of which were entirely 
outside the circle of Judaism. The outlook of its writers, 
and those whose words they record, was from a standpoint 
wholly different from that of Judaism, and most of all 
different from that of Pharisaism. It is true that Jesus 
and his earlier disciples were Jews, and it is true that 
in his teaching he had a good deal in common with the 
Pharisees. If he had not had this common ground to begin 
with, he would never have been in a position where a 
breach would have been possible. But neither he nor 
any of his immediate disciples were Pharisees; and Paul, 
who had been brought up a Pharisee, left Pharisaism 
behind him when he turned to follow Christ. The New 
Testament as a whole is the product of a religious move- 


t The reader should study in connection with this chapter the 
syn Ww of J. Klausner, Jerusalem, 1922, and not be deterred 
by the fact that it is written in Hebrew. The book is highly interest- 
ing as coming from a Jew with no leaning towards Christianity, 
though he assigns a high place to Jesus, well read in all the latest 
literature of his subject and scrupulously fair in his treatment of it. 

198 


PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 199 


ment which, ex hypothes1, was not Jewish, and its general 
attitude towards Judaism, apart from individual Jews, 
is nowhere friendly, and often hostile. The Christian 
Movement which produced the New Testament, and the 
Church which adopted it, stood in a relation to the 
Judaism from which it had come forth, which was that 
of opposition towards a rival, a discredited rival who 
could be a dangerous enemy. There was certainly never 
any question of mutual friendship between Christianity 
and Judaism in or since the century which saw the rise 
of the former. Therefore the evidence of the New Testa- 
ment upon the subject of Pharisaism is at best only the 
evidence of outsiders who could see its effects but had 
not the means of knowing from within what produced 
those effects ; and who, for want of that knowledge, were 
not in a position to judge rightly what they did see. It 
is, moreover, the evidence of partisan witnesses, honestly 
partisan no doubt, intensely convinced that they were in 
the right, but none the less partisan, even when not 
definitely hostile. This is not to say that they were on 
that account false witnesses; it is to say that their 
evidence is only of secondary value for deciding the 
question of the real meaning of Pharisaism, and cannot 
be admitted till that of the Pharisees themselves has been 
heard. 

Moreover, Pharisaism was already some centuries old, 
in principle if not in name, when Christianity appeared ; 
and it has continued, in principle if not in name, down 
to the present day. The evidence of the New Testament 
is drawn from a period of perhaps a century and a half; 
and the particular evidence presented in the Gospels 
relates to a period of not much more than a year, or 
three years if the Gospel of John be admitted. What the 
Pharisees may have said and done during the time of the 
public career of Jesus, affords but a slender base for a 
judgment upon their real nature and character, their 
conceptions of religion and morality and the results which 
they worked out from those conceptions. In any other 
connection this would be readily admitted. So far as 


200 THE PHARISEES 


evidence goes, the case is rather the other way, namely, 
that only when the ground principles and main concep- 
tions of the Pharisees are understood on their own showing 
can the meaning of the New Testament evidence be 
justly appreciated. To begin the study of Pharisaism 
with the New Testament, to help it out with Josephus 
and Apocalyptic, and only at last, if at all, to make some 
little use of the Talmud and Midrash, is indeed the easiest 
way and therefore the one most commonly followed.' 
But it does not lead to a real knowledge of Pharisaism. 
If that be indeed the object sought, and not rather the 
defence of the New Testament view of Pharisaism, then 
the only way is to begin with the Pharisaic literature, 
and learn there Pharisaism from the inside, with its 
ideals and its convictions, also its limitations and defects, 
its own conception of its task, and the difficulties and 
dangers, spiritual if not material, which confronted it in 
the fulfilment of that task. Those difficulties and dangers 
were well known to its exponents, and not always success- 
fully overcome or averted. As how should they be, since 
the Pharisees were only human and liable to fail? But 
when, by this way, Pharisaism has been learned from the 
inside, it is only then possible rightly to understand how 
it could appear in such an unfavourable light as it does 
in the New Testament. | 

For what is presented there is not fundamentally a 
conflict of mere jealousy and ill-will, “envy, hatred and 
malice and all uncharitableness,’’ though all these are 
present, and not on one side only. They are there simply 
because human nature was there, and was influenced by 


t This is the line followed in the small book of A. T. Robertson, 
The Pharisees and Jesus (Duckworth Studies in Theology Series). 
A considerable display is made in this book of acquaintance with 
Rabbinical literature; but the list of passages cited is sufficient 
to show how slight and superficial that acquaintance is. Anyone 
who has looked up the references there given will know that many 
of them are incorrect and some impossible, and will have some idea 
where they came from. Of any comprehension of the real meaning 
of Pharisaism there is not the slightest trace. 


PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 201 


a disturbing cause immensely powerful and by no means 
understood. Whatever it was, its influence was felt very 
deeply, and affected the most vital issues of religion and 
morality. Where religion is thought to be in danger, fear 
and anger are awakened, and in their train the baser 
passions of human nature readily follow to make the 
mischief worse. So it was when Christianity appeared, 
and so it has been many a time since. But only the 
partisan (of either party) will maintain that all the right 
was on one side and all the wrong on the other. The 
student who wishes to be fair to both will seek rather 
to understand what each side stood for, what it con- 
sidered to be at stake, and will neither excuse nor justify 
the deplorable elements in its defence. Pharisaism and 
Christianity faced each other in an opposition which was 
fundamentally irreconcilable, and the disturbing cause 
which created the opposition was Jesus. 

Pharisaism, after already a considerable length of 
existence and development, suddenly found itself con- 
fronted by Jesus. I say ‘‘ suddenly’ because there had 
been nothing in the past history of Judaism to prepare 
men for the appearance of one such as he. It is true 
that John the Baptist had come and gone, and Jesus at 
the outset took up his message (Mark i. 14). But Jesus 
was far other than a second John; and it may be truly 
said that he took the Pharisees entirely by surprise, 
when they began to be aware of his presence in their 
midst. And not the Pharisees alone. Until Jesus actually 
appeared, the like of him had never been known. Pro- 
phecy might be thought to point to him; but prophecy 
drew no picture beforehand by which Jesus was actually 
recognised when he did come. When the first attempts 
were made to write down the earliest recollections of what 
he had said and done, the ancient prophecies were quoted 
in order to show that this and that was fulfilled in Jesus. 
So especially in Matthew. But the prophecies had been 
read for centuries; and, in spite of them, no one was 


prepared for Jesus. 
The effect of his coming into the world has been greater 


202 THE PHARISEES 


than that made by anyone else in history ; and since it 
was the effect produced by one who, at the outset, was 
entirely unknown and unexpected, it can only be under- 
stood as due to the impression made by a personality of 
tremendous force and intensity. If there be in every 
human soul a divine element, if there be a point of contact 
(so to speak) where the soul is in touch with God, then 
I would say that in Jesus this became no longer a mere 
contact but a deep and overwhelming consciousness of 
God. Whatever of spiritual force is inherent in the 
human soul as such, in virtue of its origin from God, was 
in Jesus raised to an intensity unknown in any other person. 
So much may be said without bringing in theological 
distinctions and definitions, which I wish to avoid as 
unnecessary to the present argument. Less than this 
cannot be said, if any vera causa is to be found for the 
‘results which actually followed from the presence of 
Jesus in the world. To assume in him a personality 
marked byspiritual force and intensity to adegree unknown 
before or since is, I believe, the one and only clue to the 
right understanding of the significance of Jesus. If this 
be so, then it is vain to estimate the significance of Jesus 
by ranging him under the categories of Teacher or Messiah 
or Prophet, let alone such purely theological conceptions 
as Saviour, Redeemer and God-man. All these are 
attempts to bring the central fact of the intense spiritual 
energy of Jesus into relation with more or less familiar 
concepts. That central fact is what alone matters; 
with it, the attempts at definition are needless, without 
it they are useless and misleading. That Jesus was a 
teacher is certainly true; that he taught many things 
which the Pharisees taught is also true; but the vast 
difference in the effect produced in each case must have 
been due to a difference in the personality of those who 
gave the teaching. The teaching itself was, by comparison, 
of hardly any importance. And the same is true, more or 
less, of any other function, real or supposed, which has been 
assigned to Jesus. 

In every other St than that of his intense spite 


PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 208 


force, he was a man of his time and country, sharing in 
-the common ideas of his fellows, not exempt from their 
limitations. So much one of themselves that his neigh- 
bours asked: Is not this Joseph’s son? (Luke iv. 22), 
and yet with something about him which made them 
ask the question. He shared many of the usual religious 
beliefs; he was never challenged for saying that God 
was the Father in heaven, or for assuming the approach 
of the end of the world, or for believing in evil spirits 
and the reality of the power to cast them out. I know 
of nothing in the Gospel records to show that his mental 
outlook extended beyond his country and, in the beginning 
at all events, beyond his own nation. One who is reported 
to have said (Matt. xv. 24), to a woman of a neighbouring 
people, “‘I was not sent but to the lost sheep of the 
house of Israel,’’ would surely have expressed himself 
differently if he had had any clear conception of mankind 
as a whole, let alone of himself as having any function in 
relation thereto. That he had any far-reaching views 
upon any subject of thought whatever, a comprehensive 
theology, a profound philosophy or an elaborate theory 
on social questions, does not, so far as I can see, any- 
where appear ; though of course philosophies and theories 
in abundance have been constructed upon the foundation 
of his words. He moved amongst the ordinary persons, 
and met the ordinary experiences of his time, as belonging 
to them; but his words and his actions were what they 
were by reason of the intense spiritual energy within 
him. Those who saw and heard him appear to have 
instinctively felt that there was some dominating power 
in him (see Luke iv. 30, and indeed the Gospels passim ; 
for it is the prevailing feature of all that is told about 
him). 

To say, a priori, what is and what is not implied in 
such a personality as that indicated above would be a 
rash undertaking ; but it will probably be admitted that 
one in whom there was so vivid a consciousness of God 
would neither seek nor recognise any human authority 
for what he said or thought or believed in regard to 


204 THE PHARISEES 


religion. The ultimate authority is, of course, in every 
case, that of God himself, however it may be apprehended. 
It was so for the Pharisees no less than for Jesus; but, 
while for them it was apprehended through the Torah, 
and its injunctions, defined by intellectual process and 
moral discernment, derived their binding force in fact 
from human enactment, by him the authority of God 
was owned and felt in immediate experience. This is, if 
I understand it aright, what is meant when it is said 
(Mark i. 22), that “he taught as one having authority 
and not as the Scribes.” And if so, this is the point of 
collision between him and Pharisaism, the irreconcilable 
difference which admitted of no compromise. Once Jesus 
had appeared, being such as I have tried to indicate, 
then, unless he had lived in seclusion and kept silence, 
a collision sooner or later was certain to come. 

It would seem that neither the Pharisees nor Jesus 
sought a collision, or perhaps even expected it. Naturally 
the Pharisees did not, because they knew nothing about 
him until his fame began to spread, so that they then 
for the first time heard of the new teacher and took 
notice of him. But it is noteworthy that Jesus himself 
did not at the outset challenge the Pharisees, or apparently 
have them specially in his mind. It is said (Matt. ix. 36) 
that “When he saw the multitudes he had compassion 
on them, because they were distressed and scattered as 
sheep not having a shepherd.’”” And he said of himself 
(Matt. xv. 24): ‘I was not sent but to the lost sheep of 
the house of Israel.’’ This would seem to show that he 
found his first call to service in the needs of the uncared-for 
masses, and not in the shortcomings of those who had 
not cared for them, who at all events had not prevented 
them from getting into that lost condition. They were 
outside the Pharisaic circle, and so also was he. He 
gave them “out of the abundance of his heart” such 
“good treaure’’ as is contained in the Sermon on the 
Mount and the Parables, and it is not wonderful that 
they ‘“‘ heard him gladly” (Mark xii. 37), and that “ the 
people all hung upon him, listening’’ (Luke xix. 48). 


PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 205 


We may safely suppose that people were more impressed 
and overawed by him than by any definite message which 
he proclaimed, as that the kingdom of God was at hand. 
However this may be, he did not, as it would seem, at 
the outset throw down any challenge to Pharisaism. 
His concern was to speak out of himself what he had it 
in him to say, and not to ask what others might think 
of it. The challenge came from the Pharisees, when they 
heard of his preaching to the multitudes, and themselves 
heard him in the synagogues. They heard him say many 
things which were in accordance with their own religious 
teaching, but he said them as from himself with no appeal 
to traditional authority. They saw him do things which 
were not in accordance with the Halachah, simply on his‘ 
own authority, because he thought fit to do them. In 
_ the incident of the paralytic who was healed in Capernaum 
(Mark ii. 12), it is told how “certain of the Scribes were 
sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts, Why does 
this man thus speak? He blasphemeth: Who. can 
forgive sins but one, even God?’”’ Whether this was 
actually the first awakening of suspicion and alarm in the 
minds of the Pharisees, I do not know; but it shows 
clearly how that awakening must have come about. 
The challenge was definitely made when (as recorded in 
Mark vii. 5) the Pharisees asked him: ‘‘ Why walk not — 
thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders?” 
The challenge was met by a repudiation of the tradition 
of the elders, pointed by a quotation from Isaiah and 
addressed to “‘ you hypocrites.’’ He accused them of 
rejecting the commandment of God that they might keep 
their tradition, and he gave as an example the practice 
of evading the commandment ‘ Honour thy father and 
mother”? by the plea of ‘‘Corban.’’ This incident, if 
indeed it be correctly reported in the Gospel, is very 
instructive in regard to the attitude of Jesus towards 
the Pharisees. In the first place it is the attitude of an 
opponent. He flashed out a sharp retort to a quite 
natural question, and thereby showed himself wholly 
aloof from the Pharisaic position. He made no attempt 


206 THE PHARISEES 


to reason with them and show them where, as he thought, 
they were in error. He denounced them straightway as 
hypocrites, ‘“‘ making void the command of God by their 
tradition.”’ If he really gave the practice of Corban as 
an example, and if this be not due to later manipulation 
of the Gospel material, then the inference is legitimate 
that Jesus had no close acquaintance with the tradition 
which he denounced. The tradition of the elders is of 
course the Halachah. The alleged practice of evading 
the fifth commandment is nowhere known in the recorded 
Halachah (see especially M. Nedar, ix. 1, and the com- 
mentaries on the passage), and is, besides, entirely at 
variance with the Pharisaic practice of laying the greatest 
stress upon honour to parents. If Jesus had had any 
inside knowledge of Pharisaism on its Halachic side he 
would never have given an example so entirely beside 
the mark. But it is quite in accordance with what we 
know of the. circumstances of his life that he should have 
had no inside knowledge of Pharisaism in general or of 
Halachah in particular. His sympathies, and his affinities, 
were with the multitude who were outside the Pharisaic 
circle, the Am-ha-aretz class if that term may be taken in 
a very wide sense. And, so far as he was outside the 
Pharisaic circle, he himself was an Am-ha-aretz. The 
Pharisees could only teach the Halachah to those who 
were willing to learn it, and they could not enforce it 
upon anyone. The theoretical discussion and definition 
of Halachah was confined to the assemblies of the Rabbis, 
as appears on every page of the Mishnah. 

Now it is no doubt true that very much of what is 
recorded as Halachah in the Mishnah is of later date 
than the time of Jesus; that in his time the amount of 
defined Halachah was much less than in the time of 
Rabbi (135-219 C.E.), and that there are . differences 
between the old Halachah and the new. Nevertheless, 
and this is the only point that matters at present, there 
was some amount of defined Halachah in the time of 
Jesus, and the principle of it was derived from the 
Sopherim, if not from Ezra himself. Unless, therefore, a 


PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 207 


man stood within the Pharisaic circle he could have no 
means of knowing what they meant by Halachah or even 
what exactly they taught. He would be an outsider, 
with no means of forming a correct judgment upon what 
he saw, and at the mercy of rumour as to what he believed 
in regard to Halachah. This would be the position of 
anyone not a Pharisee or an adherent of Pharisaism, and 
it would be especially so of Jesus. For that intensity of 
spiritual force which I have pre-supposed in him would 
tend towards concentration upon his own conception of 
religion and not at all towards comprehension of, still 
less sympathy with, any other conception. This explains 
why the question of the Pharisees drew forth from him 
that sudden and explosive retort. If the figure may be 
allowed, it was as if they had touched a live wire, when 
they encountered a personality so highly charged with 
energy. But the incident indicates (if it be truly reported) 
- that Jesus really was ignorant of Pharisaic Halachic 
teaching, and showed it by the example he gave to prove 
his case. The Gospels naturally do not record any 
Pharisaic reply to the charge hurled at them, but it would 
have been a damaging one. 

If the above explanation be not accepted, then the 
only alternative is to suppose that the record of the 
- incident rests on a misunderstood tradition, written down 
by men who knew nothing about Halachah, and sharing 
the anti-Jewish feelings of the early Church. But, in 
that case, the whole force is taken away from what was 
meant to be an effective retort by Jesus to the challenge 
of the Pharisees, and the incident is left without meaning 
or importance. This seems to me a very lame conclusion, 
‘and I adopt the first alternative as being in every way 
reasonable and probable. 

If the case were so, how would it appear from the 
Pharisees’ point of view? All idea of what Christians 
have come to see in Jesus must of course be ruled out, 
since the Pharisees could not by any possibility have 
known then what the followers of Jesus would think 
about him. They would see before them a man who 


208 THE PHARISEES 


evidently had great power over the people, intensely in 
earnest, ready to fire up in a moment if he were challenged, 
a preacher of religion whose ideas were not theirs, and 
who denounced the Halachah with none the less fierceness 
because he knew little or nothing about it. Religion, for 
the Pharisees, was unimaginable without the Halachah, 
as the main and dominating element in the Torah. They 
believed in it, and taught their followers to believe in 
it, as “the Way, the Truth and the Life,’ as for them 
it really was. Necessarily, therefore, they looked upon 
Jesus as a source of serious danger, a revolutionary 
teacher whose influence threatened to destroy what to 
them was of life and death importance. They must resist 
him or be false to their own convictions. The only 
alternative was to capitulate and own that they and 
their forerunners had all been mistaken. But why should 
they capitulate? Their opponent had not attempted to 
show them ‘‘ a more excellent way’; he had only lashed 
out at them, with a fierceness which would not tend to 
make them yield to him. To ask which was right and 
which was wrong in this opposition is a useless question. 
For the matter of that, both were right. But the 
significance of the incident is that it shows clearly the 
nature of the collision between Pharisaism and Jesus as 
the mutual impact of two irreconcilable conceptions of 
religion. What is more, there was never any attempt at 
a reconciliation, not the slightest approach of the one 
side to the other, with a view to an understanding of the 
other’s position. No such attempt is mentioned in the 
Gospels, in connection with any of the numerous en- 
counters between Jesus and the Pharisees. It is true 
that Jesus commended one Scribe (Mark xii. 34) for 
saying only what any Scribe would have assented to; 
as Jesus would have known if he had ever asked them. 
The only attitude of both parties throughout the short 
career of Jesus was that of distrust and fear on the one 
side, and indignant denunciation on the other ; an attitude 
perfectly intelligible, yet one which no follower on either 
side ought to contemplate without regret. Such an 


PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 209 


opposition gave plenty of occasion for the lower passions 
of hatred and jealousy and malice and slander; and if 
the Pharisees, when Jesus died on the cross, ‘‘ stood by 
consenting to his death,’ though it was not their doing, 
the followers of Jesus have amply, if very humanly, 
revenged themselves during all the centuries since. But 
that belongs to a later stage. 

In the incident reviewed above may be seen what may 
be called the declaration of war between the Pharisees 
and Jesus; and the other encounters recorded in the 
Gospels are so many battles in that war. Being recorded 
in the Gospels, the victory is always assigned to Jesus. 
But in truth there was no victory, for one party or the 
other. Various questions were raised and each side 
approached them from a standpoint totally different 
from that of the opponent. The details differed as 
between one encounter and another; now it was the 
question of healing on the Sabbath (Mark ili. 1-6), now 
the question of divorce (Matt. xix. 3-12), now-the giving 
of tribute to Cesar (Matt. xxii. 15-22). But they all 
serve to illustrate, by reference to the several points 
raised, the sharpness of the conflict between Jesus and 
his opponents. It is not necessary, for the purpose of the 
present chapter, to deal with them all seriatim. But 
something must be said of the great denunciation in 
Matthew xxiii (cp. Luke xi. 42-54), which, whatever may 
be thought of it, certainly forms an essential part of the 
representation of Pharisaism in the New Testament. 
Whether that famous passage contains the ipsissima 
verba of Jesus, or represents the mind and utters the 
voice of the early Church, does not greatly matter so 
far as the Pharisees are concerned. Nothing can soften 
the hostility expressed in it; and, whatever its origin, 
it sums up and focuses in burning indignation the 
antagonism between the Pharisees and Jesus as felt on 
his side. I find no difficulty in believing that Jesus himself 
said what is there recorded, because it is quite intelligible 
that a man, driven to bay by his opponents, should turn 
and rend them. His attitude at the end is only the 

14 


210 THE PHARISEES 


natural outcome of his attitude all through. The various 
‘woes’ hurled at the Pharisees exceed in their cumulative 
force all that he had said previously ; but in detail they 
do not add anything to the knowledge of the real nature 
of the controversy. Neither do they throw any fresh 
light, or any light at all, upon the true character of Phari- 
saism. As far as that goes, the Pharisees would have 
had an answer from their point of view to all the charges 
hurled at them. An answer which would have been as 
powerless to persuade as the attack was. But there is 
nothing to be learned from the attack as to the real 
nature and meaning of the system attacked, though 
there is much to be learned as to the state of mind and 
point of view of the assailant. From his point of view, 
shared of course by his followers ever since, what he 
expressed was righteous indignation, denunciation of a 
system which he believed to be corrupt and false. If 
Pharisaism had been, in its true intent and real effect, 
anything like what he supposed, then of course his denun- 
ciation would have been well deserved. But he only saw 
its outward appearance, he did not know it from within, 
nor apparently ever try to understand it. That there 
were hypocritical Pharisees is admitted by all, and by 
none more explicitly than the Pharisees themselves, but 
whatever features of Pharisaism might tend to provoke 
attack, they would not be withdrawn, or modified as the 
result of attack. In other words, the constant denun- 
ciation of their system would not tend to conciliate the 
Pharisees, but would arouse in them the lower passions 
of hatred and malice and calumny from which human 
nature is not exempt, either in Pharisees or Christians. 
That the Pharisees were roused to such feelings against 
Jesus cannot be denied. That they had great provocation 
can also not be denied, except by those who know only 
one side of the case. And even they, believing that 
Jesus justly regarded the Pharisees as his enemies, might 
sometimes wonder what had become of the earlier precept 
(Matt. v. 44): “‘ Love your enemies and pray for them 
that persecute you.” If the Pharisees were as he supposed, 


PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 211 


were they not in even greater need of healing than the 
sinners and the outcasts? If they were blind, deaf and 
Spiritually dead, had he no mission to heal them, no 
pity and no sympathy for those lost souls? The more 
the alleged spiritual depravity of the Pharisees be 
emphasised, the more striking is the absence of any 
slightest attempt to lead them into a better way on the 
part of one who “ came to seek and save that which is lost ”’ 
(Luke xix. 10). The note throughout all the Gospel 
record is (apart from individual cases) that of hostility, 
denunciation and defiance on the part of Jesus towards 
the Pharisees, and of growing anger, fear, yes, and hatred, 
on their part towards him. That he was put to death 
was primarily the work of the Sadducees, they being 
the party of the chief priests, with whom the Pharisees 
had little to do. But the Pharisees could not but see in 
his fate the overthrow of a dangerous enemy, and they 
would know of no reason why they should Sebiess any 
disapproval. 

It is useless to speculate on what might have been) if 
the opposite parties in this controversy could have come 
to some understanding of each other.- It is true that 
there could have beeri no compromise, the conceptions 
of religion, for which each stood, were in principle irrecon- 
cilable, but yet each might have learned something 
from the other. Jesus was not just a Rabbi, saying only 
what other Rabbis had said. That he was a profound 
and original genius in religion needs no showing, in view 
of the immense religious movement which had its origin 
in him. Pharisaism was no “‘ organised hypocrisy,” n 
dead corpse of a once living religion. It was very much 
alive, and is alive still. These two great spiritual powers, 
the greatest that were then in the world, might have 
learned something from each other, might even have 
strengthened each other in that service of God to which 
each was consecrated. Instead, a fierce controversy, 
ended for the moment by the death of one opponent, 
and leaving behind it a legacy of mutual hostility to the 
adherents of both. So far as Jesus was concerned, the 


212 THE PHARISEES 


Pharisees went their way and thought but little more 
of him. Their own literature contains only a few refer- 
ences to him, and those merely contemptuous or scur- 
rilous, showing no recognition of the greatness of their 
opponent. Pharisaism, to all appearance, remained un- 
changed by the denunciation of Jesus. Its own adherents 
. upheld it with undiminished zeal; and its opponents, 
the followers of Jesus, gradually becoming the Christian 
Church, condemned it with increasing severity. The 
presentation of the Pharisees in the rest of the New 
Testament differs in some important respects from that 
in the Synoptic Gospels, but not in the direction of greater 
mildness or greater fairness. To the study of this further 
development I now proceed. 

The controversy between Jesus and the Pharisees was 
fought out on Jewish ground. Whatever was implicit in 
the ideas of Jesus of a significance of the Gospel for 
Gentiles, it does not appear that he ever looked on himself 
as being other than a Jew. Certainly his first followers 
continued their observance of Jewish usage after he was 
gone, with as much or as little strictness as before. Peter 
and John “‘ went up to the Temple at the hour of prayer ”’ 
(Acts ili. 1). Apparently the only difference between a 
converted and an unconverted Jew was that the former 
did and the latter did not believe that Jesus was the 
Messiah. But when, with the adhesion of Gentiles, the 
Christian Church began to realise that its religion was 
fundamentally different from Judaism, and accordingly 
drew apart from close association with it, the natural 
result was that in the later literature of the New Testa- 
ment the term Pharisee tended to be merged in the 
general term Jew. Thus Paul, in his elaborate argument 
about the failure of the Law, in the Epistle to the Romans, 
was really attacking the Pharisaic conception of the 
Torah, but he only speaks of Jews, and of Israel as a 
whole. So, too, the Diaspora Jews, from whom he 
encountered so much opposition (e.g. at Thessalonica, 


t See my Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, where the passages 
are collected and discussed. 


PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 2138 


Acts xvii. 5), may not have been, strictly speaking, 
Pharisees, and might therefore be left out from an 
attempt to show how Pharisaism is represented in the 
Acts and Epistles. But no stress can be laid on this, 
for the opposition, after all, was between Christianity 
on the one side and a Judaism on the other, of which 
Pharisaism was the strongest and most highly organised 
element. The Pharisees, alone amongst Jews, had a 
carefully thought-out conception of religion, firmly held 
and unflinchingly practised. Whatever, therefore, is said 
in the New Testament by way of condemnation of the 
Jews finds its mark in the Pharisees. If there had been 
no Pharisees, the Church would have met with little or 
no opposition. 

The attitude of the Church towards the Jews, as repre- 
sented in the New Testament, was one of increasing 
hostility as the breach became wider. The breach did not 
indeed disclose itself all at once, but it was inevitable. 
By no possibility could Judaism, let alone Pharisaism, 
be brought into accord with Christianity. From the 
point of view of the Church, therefore, the Jews were 
very naturally regarded as the enemy, the people who had 
rejected Christ and were themselves rejected of God. 
Although Paul tried to make out some sort of a case for 
the Jews as a people to whom God had given much, 
and whom He had not finally cast off (Rom. iii. 1 ff. ; 
xi. 1 ff.), the author of the Fourth Gospel made Jesus 
say to the Jews: “ Ye are of your father the devil” 
(John viii. 44). 

Denunciation of this kind was of course not based on 
a careful and critical study of the views of those who 
were denounced. It was rather the expression of a side 
already chosen, a view already held; or, if such phrases 
be thought too weak, it expressed the detestation on the 
part of men who felt that they had been won to a 
glorious and sacred cause towards those who tried to 
defeat that cause, who refused to own its leader, who 
had indeed rejected and killed him. Such denunciation 
only gained its significance from the magnitude of the 


214 THE PHARISEES 


forces arrayed against each other. Its form, the terms 
of abuse, it derived froth the human nature which was 
quite as strong in the Christian as in the Jew. The 
New Testament shows the controversy from one side 
only,-as indeed is but natural; and nothing can be 
learned from its pages which directly throws fresh light 
upon the essential meaning of Judaism. But much is to 
be learned, indirectly, from the study of the controversy, 
as to why there was a controversy at all, let alone why 
it was so fierce and unsparing. The conflict between the 
Pharisees and Jesus had been, in its essence, a conflict 
between two types of religion, each valid on its own 
premisses, and each having a right to exist, but such that 
neither could be assimilated to the other. The religion 
of the Pharisees was expressed in terms of Torah; its 
central feature was an Idea, an intellectual as well as 
moral conception, by means of which it defined and 
represented the relation of the human soul to God. The 
religion of Jesus was not expressed in terms of Torah, 
and did not centre on an Idea. It was the outcome of 
his own immediate consciousness of God, apart from all 
forms of thought, apart from all traditional authority. 
Now the conflict between Judaism and Christianity was 
inevitable for much the same reason as. before, but it 
took on a different form because, while Judaism remained 
as before, the religion of the followers of Jesus was not 
the same as hisown. Their religion was definitely centred 
in a Person, not in an Idea, and he was that person. 
The fundamental difference, felt perhaps rather than 
perceived while Jesus was the antagonist, became at once 
apparent when belief in him defined the essence of the 
new religion. The earliest disciples may have supposed 
that they were still Jews; but in professing their belief 
in Christ, they had, whether they. knew it or not, changed, 
so to speak, the centre of gravity of their religion. The 
ineffectiveness and gradual decline of the Jewish-Christian 
element in the early Church is a proof of the inherent 
inconsistency of their attitude. -They had to choose, 
and they thought they could compromise. The Church, 


PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 215 


as a whole, chose, and never dreamed of compromise. 
Accordingly, even if the Church had been able to recognise 
the true meaning of Judaism as a type of religion, it must 
still have gone its own way and sought its ideal by its 
own methods. It could never have been a mere modifica- 
tion of Judaism, and if the earliest disciples of Jesus 
supposed that it could, experience very soon proved that 
they were mistaken. 

The religion which the Church set out to teach was 
then necessarily a religion founded on Christ; he was 
its revealer and teacher. But he was much more than 
‘this. He was the Saviour and Redeemer, and the Gospel 
was not so much the record of what he had said as the 
“glad tidings” of what he had done. The Christian 
watch-word from a very early period, perhaps from the 
beginning, was ‘‘ Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou 
shalt be saved ’”’ (Acts xvi. 31, and cp. Acts 11. 38). The 
fact that Christianity was centred on Christ and not 
on the Torah, involved the inference that it was in no 
way confined to the community of Israel, but could be 
offered to the Gentiles; and not only could but ought 
to be so offered. The idea of the mission to the Gentiles 
was implicit in the teaching of Jesus, though he may 
not have expressly recognised that it was the natural 
outcome of what he taught.! But very soon after he was 
gone, the idea of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles 
came into the minds of some of his followers (see 
Acts xi. 20), who at once put it into practice. Paul was 
not the first to do this, but beyond all comparison he was 
the greatest. He cut the Church loose from Judaism, 
and rendered futile the Jewish-Christian compromise. 
If others before him had made a beginning of preaching 


t Thecommand in Matthew xxviii. 19, ‘‘Goye therefore and make 
disciples of all the nations ’’ is attributed to Jesus only after the 
resurrection. Ifthe Evangelist had known ofa precept to that effect 
uttered by Jesus before his death, presumably he would have recorded 
it. But he showed a true instinct in ascribing that command to 
Christ, since it necessarily followed from the ground principle of 
his religion. 


216 THE PHARISEES 


the Gospel to the Gentiles, he was the first to grasp the 
full significance of that new departure; and he became 
virtually the founder of the Christian Church, no longer 
Jewish but universal. We are here concerned only with 
his attitude towards Judaism, a subject on which his own 
letters give definite and emphatic testimony. What he 
says about Judaism is the most detailed presentation of 
that religion to be found in the New Testament, and calls 
for careful study accordingly. Whereas Jesus denounced 
the Pharisees in practice, for various vices and defects, 
Paul condemned Pharisaism in theory, as being intrinsi- 
cally harmful because its right of existence was gone. 
It had fulfilled its function (Gal. iii. 24) and no longer 
served any useful purpose. It was superseded by the 
Gospel. Paul’s strictures on Judaism have been accepted 
by Christians ever since as being justified by the facts 
of the case. Jews, who alone have been in a position 
to say what were the facts of the case, i.e. in regard to 
the nature of Judaism, have protested, though in vain, 
against what they deem a grave misrepresentation of 
their religion. } 

The fullest exposition of Paul’s theory of Judaism is 
found in the Epistle to the Romans, where it forms an 
essential part of the argument which fills up nearly the 
whole of that Epistle. But it is only a part of the 
argument. Paul did not set out to explain, to any who 
might be interested, what Judaism was. His purpose 
was to interpret the person and work of Christ in relation 
to the human race as a whole, and the great design of God 
in relation thereto. Judaism only came in because, until 
Christ had appeared, the Jews had been the representa- 
tives and agents in carrying out the divine purpose. To 
the Jews were given the oracles of God (Rom. iii. 2). 
Moreover, Jesus and his first followers, to say nothing of 
Paul himself, had been Jews; and, whether Judaism’ - 
were right or wrong, it had to be reckoned with and in 
some way disposed of, before the Christian Church could 
go freely out into the world with the message of the 


Gospel. 


PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 217 


The theory which Paul worked out, and which may be 
gathered from the Epistle to the Romans supplemented 
from the other Epistles, had its origin in his own relation 
to Christ. For him Christ had become the centre of his 
religion—the risen Lord who had claimed him for his 
own, who had entered and taken possession of him. “ It 
is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me” 
(Gal. li. 20). Christ became to him the clue by which 
all the dealings of God with the human race were to be 
interpreted. His appearance on earth meant far more 
than the life and death of a man of Nazareth; it marked 
the end of an old order and the beginning of a new one, 
in the design which God had intended from the Creation. 
It was especially ‘Christ crucified’’ who, in Paul's 
thought, had this immense significance. And we shall 
not perhaps be far wrong if we connect this thought of 
Christ in Paul’s mind with his horror at the state of the 
Gentile world as he saw it—blind, ignorant and morally 
vile, as is briefly but vividly suggested in Romans 1. 18-32. 
How could the human race have come into that appalling 
condition, and what hope was there of delivering them 
out of it? Others before Paul had made a beginning 
of preaching Christ to the Gentiles; but he was the first 
to realise what it really meant to do so, that here was 
the opening of a door of hope, the fulfilling of the divine 
purpose hitherto undiscerned. The world lay in the grip 
of sin because the Gentiles, though once they had known 
God, had turned away from him and given themselves 
up to idolatry and vile practices (loc. cit.). And the 
Jews also, to whom the ‘Law’ had been given, had 
disobeyed the Law and were thenceforward helpless to 
save themselves (Rom. iii. 19-20). The very Law itself 
was given ‘“‘to cause the trespass to abound” (Rom. 
v. 20), so that all alike, Jew and Gentile, were shut up 
under sin (Gal. iii. 22). From this state of bondage 
deliverance came through Christ, for he died for all 
(Rom. v. 6) and by his death broke the power of sin 
over man. The saving power of Christ was apprehended 
by the sinner through faith in him. A man is justified 


218 THE PHARISEES 


by faith, not by anything he could do for himself (for 
he could do nothing to save himself), but by what Christ 
had done for him, as an act of redeeming love, a free gift 
of grace, not the recognition of any merit (Rom. v. 12-21). 

This was the Gospel which Paul went forth to preach 
to the Gentile world; with what results the whole 
Christian Church is his witness. But he preached it to 
Jews also and first of all, and the Jews would have none 
of it. Mainly for two reasons: first, because it was based 
upon premisses which they did not admit, and secondly 
because it chose to represent Judaism as something far 
other than what they knew it to be. From their point of 
view Paul’s theory was fundamentally wrong and definitely 
unjust ; and while it might offer to Gentiles very much 
that would be of benefit to them, it offered to Jews nothing 
that was better than what they had already. 

The premisses on which Paul based his whole theory 
were, of course, the supremacy of Christ as the heaven- 
sent instrument or agent of God, and the consequent 
recognition of him as Lord and Master. If he were owned 
as the final revealer of God, then the Torah was dethroned. 
The Jew could not accept Christ without disowning the 
Torah. But why should the Jew abandon the Torah ? 
He could not do so until he had felt that it was insufficient ; 
and this he did not feel, nor ever has felt down to the 
present day, individual cases of conversion apart. 

Paul’s theory depended on the premiss of the unique 
significance of Christ. If that were not admitted there 
could be no acceptance of the theory. But even if that 
premiss were admitted, the particular conclusion which 
Paul drew from it, and worked out in his theory, did not 
necessarily follow from it. Christ might be supreme in 
spiritual things and yet not have had the special function 
which Paul’s theory assigned to him. It was one thing 
for Paul to affirm, on the witness of his own experience 
of communion with the risen Christ, that ‘‘ Christ was 
all in all’’; it was quite another thing to affirm that 
the past history of the human race had been such that 
the appearance of Christ had the particular significance 


PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 219 


which he assigned to it. No inward experience could 
establish the truth of that ; it was pure speculation, which 
the actual facts of history might confirm or might con- 
tradict. 

Now the facts of history as they were known to Paul, 
the history not of the distant. past but of the time in 
which he was living, did not by any means fit in with 
his theory. He had got all the human race in bondage 
under sin, and Christ had come, ‘in the fulness of time,”’ 
to bring deliverance, to offer salvation through faith. 
But the plan did not work as a divinely appointed plan ~ 
might be expected to work. The Jews rejected Christ, 
and consequently the deliverance in their case was not 
effected. The divine plan was held up; and unless Paul 
could find some way of accounting for this apparent 
breakdown of the intended arrangement, his whole theory 
would go to pieces. It could only be saved, as a theory, 
if it could be shown that Judaism was such as to make 
the intervention of Christ necessary, and if the Jews 
were only prevented from seeing this by their own 
blindness and hardness of heart. Judaism, accordingly, 
was depicted by him as a religion exclusively of Law, 


in which commands were given but no power to fulfil. 


them, in which failure in respect of even one command- 
ment involved a breach with God which could never 
be closed, a system in which the accumulation of precepts 
became a heavy burden to the will and the consciousness 
of guilt a terror to the conscience (see Rom. x, xi). The 
hardening of the Jews, shown in their rejection of Christ, 
was the opportunity of the Gentiles; and though God 
had not cast off His people (Rom. xi. 1) they would have 
to wait for their salvation ‘‘ until the fulness of the Gentiles 
be come in”’ (Rom. xi. 25). 

Now, if Judaism had really been at all like what Paul 
described, it would have become extinct long before 
Christ appeared. No people could ever have survived 
with such an intolerable religion; clearly not, because 
until Christ came there was under the Law (according 
to the theory) no means whatever of deliverance from the 


220 - THE PHARISEES 


burden of sin. Israel would have been a prey to religious 
mania. In actual fact, Israel was nothing of the kind 
and, also in actual fact, Judaism was widely different 
from the misshapen phantom conjured up by Paul. He 
could only evolve that by leaving out essential elements 
of Judaism, in particular the conscious personal relation 
of the soul to God through which came strength to do 
the divine will, and forgiveness for repentance after sin. 
Paul presented a mere travesty of Judaism, and nothing 
can ever make his picture of it anything else. To defend 
it as being possibly true of some obscure school of 
Pharisees would be futile even if it could be shown that 
there was such a school. His theory required a judgment 
upon Judaism as a whole, for it was Judaism as a whole 
which, according to him, stood in the way of the realisation 
of the divine plan. Paul’s theory did not fit the facts ; 
and, whether by conscious intention or not, the facts 
had to be distorted to fit the theory. He was not writing 
as an historian, describing this or that type of religion, 
this or that development of history. He was expounding 
a great and overwhelming idea of divine providence, to 
whose inner meaning the clue was found in Christ. And 
it is quite conceivable that, being possessed with this 
idea, he saw not only human history (so far as he knew it), 
but that Judaism in which he had once lived but which 
now he had left behind, not as they really were, but as 
they appeared in the light of his great idea. Judaism, 
as the religion of Torah to one who believed in Torah, 
could not appear the same to one who no longer believed 
in Torah but did passionately believe in Christ. If Paul 
could have recognised that while the two conceptions 
were incommensurable yet both were valid, he could 
still have had a Gospel to preach to the Gentiles, even 
a Gospel of faith in Christ. As it was, and however he 
came to do it, he did but set the one conception against 
the other, and by the light of Christ saw only black 
shadows in the religion of Torah; with the result that 
from his day to the present, Judaism has suffered under 
a cruel injustice, which no protestations on the part of 


PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 221 


Paul that “‘his heart’s desire was for Israel that they 
might be saved’”’ (Rom. x. I) have ever in the slightest 
degree removed. The Christian Church, as was only 
likely, has followed Paul, and even gone beyond him, 
as will be shown presently, in condemnation of Judaism ; 
and it has maintained that wrong through nineteen 
centuries. 

Such was the way in which Paul tried to account for 
the fact that the Jews rejected Christ, and would not 
listen to the Gospel as it was preached to them. That 
the Pharisees rejected Christ is not wonderful, considering 
that even as he saw them only from the outside so they 
saw him only from the outside. Neither came into any 
sort of contact with the other through mutual under- 
standing and sympathy. That the Jews would have none 
of Paul’s gospel is still less wonderful. Paul offered them 
a salvation of which they felt no need, recommended 
by a theory whose premisses they denied, and involving 
a conception of their own religion which they repudiated. 
They had their own ideas about the dealings of God with — 
the human race; and they found ample room within those 
ideas for a firm belief in the righteousness of God and 
His saving mercy towards that human race which He 
had created. They saw the moral corruption of the 
Gentile world as clearly as Paul did, but they had no 
reason to adopt his theory with respect to it. That 
whole theory was nothing but a speculation of his own ; 
the offered deliverance was as unreal as the alleged 
universal bondage under sin. Paul’s theory was only 
his reading of facts which were patent to them as well 
as to him, and which they read in a wholly different 
way He might have something to say to Gentiles, and 
Jews have always admitted that the work of Christianity 
in the Gentile world has been a powerful means of 
spreading the knowledge of God, and bringing light into 
the dark places of the earth; but Christianity, whether 
preached by Paul or the Church since his day, had not, 
and has not, anything to offer to Judaism of which 
Judaism stands in vital need. That each would be vastly 


222 THE PHARISEES 


the better by learning to appreciate the good in the 
other is true; but they can never be reconciled except 
as equals, and the age-long attempt of Christians to 
convert the Jews only shows that Christians have not 
the slightest understanding of the real nature of the 
case. 

There remains to be considered the consequences of the 
injustice of the Christian view of Judaism as felt by the 
Jews. Whether or not the Church adopted Paul’s theory 
in all its details, it did take up the attitude of definite 
hostility to the Jews. But the Church was faced by 
this difficulty, that its own position depended largely on 
the witness of Scripture, and according to that Scripture 
the Jews had been the chosen people of God. That 
Scripture was the only sacred book which the Church 
at the first possessed, the only writing to which the 
Christian missionary could appeal when trying to con- 
vince the Gentile. How could the Jews be wrong when 
they were only doing what in that Scripture they were 
commanded to do? Yet the Jews were wrong, according 
to the Christian view, wrong now whatever they might 
have been before Christ came. The Church solved this 
problem by an act of sheer usurpation, boldly declaring 
that Christians and no longer Jews were the true Israel, 
that the Scriptures belonged of right to the Christians 
and not to the Jews, and that Christians alone were 
competent to interpret them, that the real meaning of 
those Scriptures was a foreshadowing of Christ and the 
Church, while the Jewish dispensation had been only a 
temporary order now definitely overthrown. This attitude 
of the Church does not appear fully defined in the New 
Testament, but there is plenty of evidence there which 
points to that result. Paul had distinguished between 
Israel after the flesh and Israel according to the promise 
(Rom. ix. 8). The truth which underlay that distinction 
did not need that Israel should be brought in at all; it 
was not an historical but a theological distinction, and 
only served to contrast active faith with passive preroga- 
tive as a ground of religious certitude. It had nothing 


PHARISAISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 228 


to do with Israel, and the application of it to Israel was 
wholly unjustifiable. 

So also Paul had used the Scriptures in what may be 
called a Christian sense, interpreting them to mean 
something very different from what Jewish teachers read 
in them. He may not have arrived at the position that 
only Christians had the right to the Scriptures, but he 
was far on the way to it. The Church was not slow to 
follow his lead, and to deny to Israel the possession of 
her own Scriptures—the right to hold any longer the 
position which those Scriptures had declared to be hers. 

This policy may have been, or may have seemed to be, 
right in the eyes of those who were out to preach the 
Gospel to the Gentile world. It may have appeared to 
be justified by the alleged failure of Judaism and the 
wicked obstinacy of the Jews. Yet one might have hoped 
that the Christian conscience, presumably enlightened by 
the Gospel, would have refused to countenance that 
policy. Or had the Church already forgotten the injunc- 
tion: “‘ Do unto others as ye would that they should do 
unto you’? 

But if this act of usurpation could seem to be war- 
ranted on Christian premisses, those premisses had no 
validity for Jews. They could only regard the policy 
of the Church as a violent outrag perpetrated against 
their religion and themselves who professed that religion. 
Paul refers in his epistles to the opposition of the Jews 
to his preaching (2 Cor. xi. 25-6, and cp. Acts xiv. 19, 
XVii. 5, XViii. 12). Is it wonderful that the Jews should 
Oppose a man who preached as Paul did, against all that 
to them was sacred? Were they not right to defend it 
against insult and injury? What ground had they, or 
could they have, for admitting the superiority of a religion 
which was commended to them by such methods? Were 
they likely to be persuaded to own the supremacy of one 
whose followers proclaimed the failure of the Jewish 
religion wherever they came, and who himself had set 
them the example? The Jews were only human after 
all; and if they showed a good deal less than saintly 


224 THE PHARISEES 


forbearance under severe provocation, it 1s not for the 
Christian Church, which inflicted on them that provoca- 
tion, to hold up its hands in horror and be shocked at 
the violence of the Jews against its holy apostles. 

All this, shameful story as it is, belongs to the subject 
of the presentation of Judaism in the New Testament, and 
is necessary in order that those who read only the New 
Testament may know something of the other side of the 
picture. It all goes to confirm what was said at the 
beginning of this chapter, that Judaism and Christianity 
are two incommensurable types of religion, of which 
neither starts from the premisses of the other, uses its 
terms or reaches its conclusion. There need be no oppo- 
sition between them; but, if there is to be opposition, 
it can never be ended by the conquest or suppression of 
one by the other. Their adherents may argue for ever 
against each other, but neither will ever convince the 
other. They may persecute each other, though Christians 
alone have been in a position to use this method, but 
they will never succeed. How many millions of Jews 
have been slaughtered by Christian hands, harried and 
afflicted by Christian rulers, and yet the Jews remain, 
unconquered and unconquerable ! 


CHAPTER IX 
CONCLUSION 


In the foregoing chapters I have described, to the best 
of my ability, the origin, the main principles and the 
leading conceptions of Pharisaism, and have shown how 
it was distinguished from the special type of Judaism 
represented in the Apocalyptic and other Apocryphal 
writings, also how it was related to the earliest form of 
Christianity. If I have succeeded to any extent in what 
I have tried to do, then the reader ought to have acquired 
some fair knowledge of who the Pharisees were, what 
their religion meant to them, and how they expressed it. 

In this concluding chapter I shall take the general 
conception arrived at by the lines of study already 
followed, and try to form some estimate of the significance 
of Pharisaism as a factor in the religious development of 
the human race. In this estimate I include Rabbinism 
along with that which bore the name of Pharisaism, since, 
as has been shown, there was no difference of principle 
between them. If a distinction be drawn it would only = 
be that Pharisaism was the forerunner, or better, the 
parent, of Rabbinism; the latter only developed the 
principles of the former, and arrived at results greater 
in amount but not different in kind from those reached 
by the Pharisees. Rabbinism was implicit in Pharisaism. — 
Given Ezra and the Sopherim, and the Talmud was 
bound to come, sooner or later. 

That Pharisaism had a significance as an element in 
the religious development of mankind is not denied by 


anyone. For if Judaism was a preparation for Chris- 
15 225 


226 THE PHARISEES 


tianity, as is generally assumed, then that preparation 
depended largely, though not wholly, upon Pharisaism. 
It is true that Christianity rejected what was especially — 
distinctive of the Pharisees, namely the Halachah, and 
expressed its disapproval of them and their ways in 
terms of remarkable severity. It owed much more to 
the Apocalyptic type of Judaism than to the Pharisaic, 
so far as immediate influence was concerned. But it 
was the Pharisees who developed the Synagogue; and 
beyond any question Christianity owed a great deal to 
the Synagogue as an institution whereby religion was 
fostered on lines of personal piety, without priest and 
without ritual. It was the Pharisees, or more particu- 
larly the Scribes, who collected and arranged the Hebrew 
Scriptures, without which Christianity would have lacked 
its chief means of proving to the Gentiles the truth of 
its message. And the general ethical teaching taken 
over by Christianity was certainly Pharisaic, though not 
exclusively so. The Judaism out of which Christianity 
arose was by no means entirely Pharisaic, and Christianity 
was doubtless influenced by all the various types of 
Judaism which it found in existence. Nevertheless, 
Pharisaism was the one which had most of self-supporting 
vitality, and could therefore exercise the most powerful 
influence, directly or indirectly, upon Christianity. It 
was a living Judaism which gave birth to Christianity, 
and its life was strongest in Pharisaism. | 

Now if the significance of Pharisaism were really con- 
fined to its having enabled Judaism to prepare the way 
for Christianity, it would necessarily follow that with the 
rise of Christianity Pharisaism would disappear, or at 
least lose its vitality and worth as a religion. This is 
indeed the usual opinion held by Christians; and, from 
the Christian point of view, such an opinion is very natural, 
Paul, as we have seen, tried to provide for the fact of a 
continued existence of Judaism by his theory that a 
hardening in part had befallen Israel, which would last 
until the fulness of the Gentiles had come in (Rom. xi. 25). 
After all, even Paul could not quite forget what he had felt 


CONCLUSION 227 


and believed about the religion which had once been his 
and the people to whom he had once belonged. But the 
Church did not adopt his view, and instead took the 
line that the day of Judaism was over, and its inheri- 
tance given to another. Christ had annulled the autho- 
rity of the Law, and those who might still cling to the 
Law were clinging to a mere phantom. The Jews had 
rejected Christ, and that was the end of them; the loss 
of their Temple and the ruin of their land were the evident 
signs that God had done with them. 

This theory is conclusively shown to be wrong by the 
undeniable fact that Judaism, and more particularly 
Pharisaism, did not die out either then or since. And 
what is more, the rise of Christianity did not injure its 
vitality or weaken its validity in the eyes of its adherents, 
The terrible suffering inflicted by the two great wars, 
those against Vespasian and Hadrian, tried to the utter- 
most the faith and endurance of the Jewish people; but 
it did not break their spirit nor awaken any misgiving 
as to the validity of that religion which helped them to 
stand fast in the evil day. Such misgiving found expres- 
sion in IV Ezra, and perhaps in other quarters on the 
outer fringe of Pharisaism ; but it did not utter the real 
‘mind of the Pharisees. And the proof of that is the fact 
that after the Hadrianic persecution, the Rabbis took up 
their old task of maintaining and developing the religious 
life of their people, with undiminished belief in their 
task and trust in God who had appointed it for them. 
From that time onward the Jews were for the most part 
a people with a burden of sorrowful remembrance ; but 
they were also a people of undying hope and uncon- 
querable faith. Such they have continued to be down 
to the present day, in spite of all that Christians could 
do to convert them, to crush them, to ignore them. 
Throughout the whole course of Christian history the 
Jews have been present, looked on as unwelcome 
intruders on the scene, the obstinate factor which 
resisted all attempts to bring it into the Church’s scheme 
of unity, the stubborn dissenters from her teaching, the 


228 . THE PHARISEES 


witnesses to testify that there was another side to what 
she would have to be a chose jugée. They lived on, 
whether the Church would or no; and they lived on 
because their religion was to them as true, as real, as 
living as it had ever been. Neither Christ nor Paul nor 
anyone else had cancelled or destroyed it, whatever 
Christians might say. And so it has remained. 

_ Evidently, therefore, the usual answer that Judaism 
was the preparation for Christianity and that its work 
was done when Christ had appeared, cannot be accepted, 
at all events as usually understood. Judaism, Rabbinical 
Judaism, is as deeply rooted in the hearts and souls of 
its adherents as Christianity in those of Christians. And 
that is the only impartial test which can be applied. 
Mere assertion of the part of one against the other can 
carry no weight. The Christian denial of the validity of 
Judaism rests only on Christian premisses and, as an 
absolute judgment, is worthless. Jews have never denied, 
or attempted to deny, the validity of the Christian 
religion.! 

Yet the view that Judaism was a preparation for 
Christianity is capable of another meaning beside the 
one which has been usually assigned to it. A meaning, 
moreover, which takes in both Christianity and the 
Judaism which has kept even pace with it, as being both 
parts in one great whole, each having there a necessary 
place, and neither being the rival of the other or implying 
the supersession of the other. 

Christianity, in the course of its history, took up and 
assimilated many Gentile, and especially Greek, ideas. 
To what extent it was influenced by the mystery religions 
is uncertain ; but the presence of mystery as an element 
in the Christian conception of religion was not derived 
from Judaism, except in so far as there is an element of 


« For Jewish views on Christianity see J.E. iv. 56-7, and the 
references there given. The passage in Maimonides’ Hilc. Melachim, 
xi. 4, must be read in an uncensored text. The British Museum 
copy of the Editio princeps, Soncino 1490 has the passage, but heavily 
censored and partly torn away. 


CONCLUSION | 229 


mystery in all religion. If it were not original, it was 
developed by influences from Gentile, not from Jewish 
thought. The sacrificial and sacerdotal elements in 
Christianity were no doubt developed from the use made 
of the Old Testament by the Church; but they would 
not have been developed at all, unless they had satisfied 
Gentile needs, and harmonised with previous Gentile 
usage. The Judaism which gave birth to Christianity 
regarded priesthood and sacrifice solely as adjuncts of 
the Temple, having no place or function in the religion 
of the common life. Pharisaism was never at any time 
a priestly and sacrificial religion. Christian theology was 
almost entirely shaped by applying Greek, and afterwards 
Latin, thought to its original concepts. To such Gentile 
elements Christianity no doubt owes much of its value 
as a means of developing a real world-religion. The 
rapidity with which it expanded, and the completeness 
of its final triumph over Paganism show how well it 
fitted itself for its great task, and with what success it 
discharged it, so far as it has yet gone. To have rooted 
out Paganism and replaced it by a religion of infinite 
spiritual possibilities was an achievement than which no 
greater has been seen on earth. Paul saw only the 
beginning of it, indeed himself made the first real begin- 
ning of it; but in idea he saw the whole of it, and saw 
it as part of the design of God for the redemption of the 
human race. No one who believed in God at all would 
question the truth of Paul’s prophetic interpretation. 

It was part, and a necessary part, of the function of 
the missionaries of the Church to take the Gospel right 
out into the Gentile world, preach it there and defend it 
there, expose it to all the risks of adverse influences 
which might corrupt its purity or confuse its thought. 
They went forth trusting in the inherent power of the 
Gospel they preached to maintain itself and prevail over 
such evil influences, being under no delusion as to the 
character of the Gentile world which they sought to 
redeem. They learned to build up the Church out of the 
best that the Gentile world had to offer; and only so 


230 THE PHARISEES 


could they make it able to fulfil its purpose. This is not 
the place to dwell upon the defects and failures of the 
Church in the course of its long history. Whatever 
Christianity has done, and whatever it is now, is the 
expression of the whole movement summed up in the 
conception of the Church. 

Now it is evident that the introduction of Christianity 
into the Gentile world was an extremely dangerous 
operation. I do not mean personally dangerous to its 
advocates, though, of course, it was that. I mean 
dangerous to the Gospel itself, from contact with, and 
possible corruption by, the influence of religion and 
morality of a lower order than itself. Christianity boldly 
assimilated much that it found in Gentile thought and 
practice, and turned it to higher use. But it also refused 
much and condemned much. And while it variously 
modified or abandoned some of its original Jewish con- 
ceptions, and though it definitely dissociated itself from 
Judaism, it never wholly cut the roots of its Jewish 
origin. Christianity began as a spiritual monotheism, 
and it has never lost that character, though it has intro- 
duced qualifications into its idea of monotheism for which 
Judaism is not responsible. Moreover, Christianity took 
over as its sacred book the Hebrew Scriptures; and 
though it interpreted these in a Christian sense and 
applied their teaching in non-Jewish ways, still those 
Scriptures formed the basis of the Church’s teaching and 
they remained for Christians the Word of God. The 
Church never dreamed of disowning them; and however 
much might be taken up of Gentile contributions to 
Christian thought and practice, it never sufficed to over- 
come the regulating and restraining influence of the 
Hebrew Scriptures. If that restraining and regulating 
influence had been absent, if the Church had cut herself 
off from Judaism as completely as she wished to do and 
thought she had done, it is at least conceivable that she 
would have amalgamated completely with the religions 
of the Gentile world. In that case, it is safe to say that 
Christianity would have stood on a much lower level in 


CONCLUSION 281 


the scale of absolute religion than it does now, and would 
hardly, if at all, have been able to claim the rank of a 
world-religion. Apart from the original creative impulse, 
which was neither Jewish nor Gentile, but individual and 
personal to its Founder, it can hardly be denied that the 
Jewish inheritance which the Church took over has been 
of immense importance in guarding Christianity from 
the danger of its immersion in the Gentile world. 

All this is admissible on the usual theory that Judaism 
was a preparation for Christianity. The Scriptures were 
part of that preparation. I go on to a further develop- 
ment of the thought which I believe to be no less true, 
and no less important, but which cannot be reconciled 
with the usual theory. Christianity is a religion based 
upon faith in a Person, and the main theme of its message 
is the offer of salvation through faith in Christ. It 
placed, and places, faith before everything else. This 1s 
shown, if it needs to be shown, by the fact that the con- 
dition of membership in the Church was a confession of 
faith, which at a very early period took the form of a 
series of articles of belief, in short a Creed. The Creed 
became the bond of unity which held the Church together. 
It is, of course, perfectly true that the Church always 
taught a pure morality, a holy life. But she did not 
insist on this with the same vigour with which she insisted 
on right belief. No one was ever burnt at the stake for 
being an evil liver. In other words, the doing of the 
will of God took the second place and not the first 
amongst the objects to which the Church directed her 
efforts. This is a perfectly valid theory, and the Church 
was entirely consistent in the way in which she worked 
it out. Judged by its results it has been the means of 
incalculable benefit to mankind. 

Now Judaism in general, and Pharisaism in particular, 
was a religion which put the doing of God’s will in the 
first place, and faith in the second place ; faith, moreover, 
not in a Person but in God Himself. Faith, therefore, in 
Judaism kept its original meaning and never became 
such that any creed could express it. Judaism has never 


232 THE PHARISEES 


had a creed, though Maimonides tried to devise one. 
But Judaism, since the Pharisees came on the scene, has 
had the Halachah, which was the definition of the will of 
God. The Halachah is the analogue of the Creed. 
Whether its authors succeeded in fully defining the divine 
will is not now the question. The point is that for them 
the doing of the divine will was the first and foremost 
essential of religion, whatever else might come after it. 
Pharisaism and Rabbinism accordingly took on a form 
- peculiar to itself, and widely different from that assumed 
by Christianity. It was an interpretation of the same 
spiritual realities as those which were present to Christian 
minds, but it reasoned from different premisses and 
stated its conclusions in different terms. It was a different 
religion, and not capable of being harmonised with Chris- 
tianity, but it was in every way just as valid, had just 
as good a right to exist. As in fact it has existed, and 
does still exist. 

It has been admitted that Christianity was better 
qualified to bring good to the Gentile world than Judaism 
was. That Gentile world being what it was, a religion 
with the peculiar adaptive power of Christianity was the 
best type of religion for the purpose. Presumably that 
was why Christianity appeared at all, and developed on 
the lines which it actually followed. But that is not to 
say that the truth for which Judaism stood became 
untrue when Christianity appeared, nor that as an inde- 
pendent type of religion it lost what value it had pre- 
viously possessed. In fact it did neither. And, what is 
more, it has kept its vitality alongside of Christianity as 
a continual reminder that no one religion, and not that 
particular religion, exhausted all the possibilities of reve- 
lation, summed up the whole of the divine purpose 
towards mankind. Christianity held up one ideal, Judaism 
held up another; and both ideals were visions of what 
God had shown to human souls. If we may with 
reverence speak of the divine intention as shown in the 
religious training of mankind, may we not say that that 
intention needed for its fulfilment both these religions 


CONCLUSION 283 


and not one only? This contention is not met by saying 
that Christianity adopted the best in the Jewish religion 
and combined it with the best in Gentile religion, becoming 
thereby the one supreme world religion. My point is 
that Christianity, having taken over what it did from 
both these sources and becoming thereby what it is seen 
to be in history, still needed Judaism as its correlative 
term, because Judaism represented religious elements 
which were not represented in Christianity, and which 
were incompatible with Christianity. Whatever part 
Christianity was intended to play in the divine design 
for mankind, that part could only be played if there 
were present also a living Judaism, partly to guard Chris- 
tianity from complete assimilation to Gentile religion, 
and partly to maintain and represent other aspects of 
revelation beside those which Christianity offered. If 
Judaism had died out, or had succumbed to Christianity, 
the whole effect of its continued presence in the world 
would obviously have been lost. Christianity itself would 
necessarily have failed to do what it was appointed to 
do, if its appearance in the world had any meaning, any 
relation to the divine plan. Christian efforts to convert 
the Jews. or destroy Judaism were in reality attempts 
against her own life, since they were efforts to suppress 
a form of religion other than her own and equally neces- 
sary with her own if her own task were to be fulfilled. 
The Church regarded a living Judaism as a continual 
danger. A dead Judaism would have been a fatal 
disaster. 

Still speaking in terms of the divine plan, we may say 
that both Judaism and Christianity were necessary for 
the work of raising and spiritualising the religion of the 
human race; Christianity as the immediate agent in that 
work, and Judaism as safeguarding elements in religion 
of which Christianity could not for her immediate pur- 
pose make use, but which would find their application, 
““ When the fulness of the Gentiles had come in’”’; in other 
words, when the world was ready for them. Judaism 
waited, and still waits, not because of any ‘‘ hardening 


284 THE PHARISEES 


in part’’ which has befallen her, but because the best 
she has to give will only find acceptance when the pre- 
paration of Christianity has done its work, and the world 
is ready for a religion which will at last unite the im- 
perishable elements of both its forerunners. This is 
what I mean by the larger whole in which both Judaism 
and Christianity are taken up, and in which each has 
its necessary part to play. 

Judaism is a reasoned attempt to discern and interpret 
the fundamental spiritual realities, and it stated its 
results in terms of Torah. Christianity is another reasoned 
attempt to discern and interpret those same spiritual 
realities, and it stated its results in terms of Christ. As 
the standards were of a wholly different order, in the 
one case an Idea and in the other case a Person, so the 
terms in which the results were stated in the one case 
differed widely from those in which the results were 
stated in the other. But both were contemplating the 
same spiritual realities; and each saw what the other 
saw; though it did not describe that in the same way, 
nor draw from it the same conclusions. Each, therefore, 
has an independent right of existence; and while the 
adherents of each may, as they naturally would, find 
more satisfaction for their own spiritual needs in their 
own type of religion, neither is entitled to deny the 
validity of the other.". Neither the one nor the other 
can establish a claim to be the absolute religion. " Perhaps 
an absolute religion is not possible, but the claim of any 
existing religion to be absolute is not proved merely by 
its own assertion. If the claim be put forward by or 
on behalf of Christianity, it is met by the question which, 
out of all the varying types of Christianity, is the true 
one? If one of these be the absolute religion, it must 
establish its claim against all the rest, who have not 
so far admitted it. And even while the Church was 


1 On this whole idea, see an essay by the present writer already 
referred to, in the Hibbert Journal for January 1923, entitled ‘‘ The 
Fundamentals of Religion as Interpreted by Christianity and 
Rabbinical Judaism.’’ 


CONCLUSION 285 


undivided, and could still claim with some justification 
to represent Christianity as a whole, its principle of nulla 
Salus extra ecclesiam was only valid for itself, except in a 
sense which it did not intend. For, as the Church under- 
stood salus, there certainly was no salus, and no desire 
for it, extra ecclesiam. As an argument against the 
validity of Judaism, or any other non-Christian religion, 
it is merely futile. 

Judaism has continued to exist from the days of Paul 
to the present time as a religion by which Jews have 
lived and for which they have died. It has been to them 
as true, real and effective a means of expressing their 
relation with God as Christianity has been to Christians. 
It has afforded them all that a living religion could afford. 
It has done this by its own intrinsic power, felt and 
owned in Jewish hearts, steadfastly maintained there in 
spite of all the temptations to apostasy presented by 
persecution, and the varied ill-treatment dealt out by an 
unfriendly world. Christians had their experience of 
persecution under Decius and Diocletian, and very bitter 
they found it. Yet all that is but a trifle in comparison 
with what they have inflicted on Jews. The Christian 
Church lived through the fiery trial under Diocletian and 
found safety under Constantine. She did so through 
the heroism of faith, for which she rightly honoured her 
martyrs and confessors. The Jews have had centuries 
of Diocletian and have not yet, except here and there, 
found their Constantine. But they, too, have endured 
through the heroism of faith, for which they also honour 
their martyrs and confessors. What is true in the one 
case is true in the other. If Christianity is vindicated as 
a living religion, a true revelation to the human soul of 
divine realities and a true interpretation of those realities 
to human thought and apprehension, so in like manner 
Judaism is vindicated as another true revelation of those 
same divine realities, another true interpretation of them 
to human thought and apprehension. To object that 
there cannot be two revelations differing in form and 
contents yet equally valid is to beg the question. Here 


236 THE PHARISEES 


are these two; and the same criterion by which alone 
the validity of the one can be established, viz. the test of 
experience in life and thought, will establish the validity 
of the other. 

That Rabbinical Judaism and Christianity are funda- 
mentally irreconcilable, differing both in their standard 
of reference and in the terms by which their contents 
are described, is a fact plain to be seen by any competent 
and impartial student of both religions. But the mean- 
ing of that fact only comes into view when brought into 
relation with such a conception of the divine plan as 
has been suggested above. The fulfilment of that design 
required the presence and influence of two types of 
religion, not one only. It would have failed if the one 
religion could have been superseded by the other. There- 
fore the two types had to be mutually incommensurable, - 
though not necessarily antagonistic. The hostility arose. 
only through human inability on each side to read the 
deeper meaning of the relation between the two. con- 
trasted opposites. But it was surely no accident which 
produced these two types of religion, of which neither 
could be changed into the other, and neither could con- 
vert or destroy the other. Both were necessary and 
both in due time appeared in the world. Judaism was 
long anterior to Christianity; and Pharisaism, with 
which alone we are at present concerned, had been in 
existence, in principle if not in name, for several cénturies 
before Christianity arose. In the course of those cen- 
turies Judaism, under the influence of the Pharisees, was 
being moulded into the form which would make it best 
able to discharge the function assigned to it in the divine 
plan. It was developed into a religion which would be 
able to maintain its vitality and individual character 
when it should be called on to meet the difficulties and 
dangers of co-existence with Christianity. Pharisaism, 
therefore, developed to the fullest extent the principle of 
faithfulness to the divine will, and took the Torah as its 
supreme revelation. The Pharisees were the forerunners 
of the Rabbis, and it was the Rabbis, as contemporary 


CONCLUSION 287 


with Christians through the centuries, who had to meet 
the difficulties and dangers of the co-presence of the two 
religions. Theirs was the supremely hard task of keeping 
Judaism a living religion, true to its own vision of divine 
reality, in spite of all the efforts of a scornful or hostile 
world and a persecuting Church. Their defence against 
being borne down in the struggle was partly the fact 
itself that their religion was of a fundamentally different 
type from Christianity. The younger religion had nothing 
to offer them better or truer than what their own religion 
already possessed. From a worldly point of view they 
had everything to gain from accepting Christianity ; 
from the spiritual point of view they had nothing to gain. 
It was so even in the earliest days of the Church ; and, 
as the centuries passed by, and the Church went further 
and further along the path of being “all things to all 
men,’ she had less and less that could induce a Jew to 
prefer her religion to his own. 

But the defence of Judaism against the disintegrating 
influence of Christianity was not only in the inherent 
_ difference of its character as a religion. The whole 
system of the Halachah acted both as a bond to keep 
the Jewish community together, and also as an external 
protective covering, within which the spirit of Judaism 
could maintain its strength and vitality. Without the 
Halachah it is hardly conceivable that Judaism should 
have survived through all the strain and stress of perse- 
cution which fill the centuries of its history in Christian 
times. The Halachah was thus an indispensable part of 
the equipment of Judaism for its task, the “ armour of 
God whereby it should be able tc stand fast in the evil 
day ; and having done all, to stand.’ That has certainly 
been its effect. 

Now the Halachah was especially the creation of the 
Pharisees. They laid down the principles on- which it 
was formed; and while it is perfectly true that the 
amount of defined Halachah in the Mishnah and the 
Talmud is far greater than what was already in existence 
in the time of Jesus, yet there is no difference of principle 


288 THE PHARISEES 


between them. The Rabbis worked out more fully what 
the Pharisees had begun. What they both did was to 
build up a strong wall of protection within which Judaism 
might be safe, fearing no danger that might threaten it 
from any quarter. That they were conscious of the 
deeper meaning of what they did I by no means maintain. 
They had their own conception of religion, and they 
developed it consistently and faithfully. But, looking 
back, that deeper meaning can be plainly seen, and it is 
this: that the creation and elaboration of the Halachah 
denote the special preparation of Judaism for the hard 
and dangerous task which was awaiting it in the future. 
That is the meaning of what is usually described as the 
degradation of Judaism, at the hands of the Pharisees, 
into a barren formalism, the descent from prophetic 
freedom to organised hypocrisy. A greater misreading of 
history it is scarcely possible to imagine. Pharisaism was 
the application of prophetic teaching to life, and such 
the Pharisees understood it to be. But, beyond and 
above what they consciously understood, was the deeper 
meaning of their work as making ready their religion to 
endure its age-long martyrdom in the coming time. They 
had their faults—who has not? Their system was not 
perfect; they themselves knew well the moral and 
spiritual dangers to which its adherents were exposed, 
and they were not always successful in averting those 
dangers. But they did their work in their day, in spite 
of the sneers and ill-will of the Gentiles; the Rabbis 
carried on what the Pharisees had begun and, through 
the labours of both, Judaism was carried safely down 
the ages. | 

What form its task may assume in ages yet to come, 
it is vain to speculate. But when the time shall come 
when Christianity shall have done all it can do, under 
the forms and conditions which it has hitherto adopted, 
there will then be a Judaism able and ready to offer its 
imperishable treasure, kept safe through the ages, to a 
world which will no longer scorn. And at last the two 
great religions, which will have each accomplished that 


ts 


CONCLUSION 239 


for which God made them two and not one, will join in 
His service, and side by side utter the prayers and 
praises and inspire the lives of His children. 

_ To have begun the preparation for that “‘ far-off divine 
event’ is the true significance of Pharisaism. 











INDICES 


I. General Index 
_ II. Rabbinical Passages Cited 

III. Old Testament Passages Cited 
IV. New Testament Passages Cited 


16 


I. GENERAL INDEX. 


Abelson, J., 150%. 

Akabja b. Mahalalel, 108 n. 

Akiba, 45, 52, 73, 84, 85, 124, 
179, 189. 

Alexandra (Salampsio), 46 7, 97. 

Alkimus, 25. 

Am-ha-aretz, 31, 32, 34, 35, 
TI9Q 

Antigonos of Socho, 23. 

Antiochus ITI, 24. 

Antiochus Epiphanes, 28, 49. 

Apocalyptic literature, 180-1, 
182-5, 190-3. 

Attributes, the divine, 154. 


Bacher, W., 78, 85n. 
Bahya, 34, 157. 

Bousset, W., 12. 

Biichler, A., 51”, 155%”, 164. 


Charles, Canon, 180, 186, 193. 

Church, the, its attitude towards 
Judaism, 195, 209, 213, 221, 
222-4. 

Cocheba (Simeon) Bar, 45, 52, 
82, 159, 179, 187, 189. 
Conscience, under the Halachah, 

120-2. 
Corban, 205. 
Creed, the Christian, 231. 
Chwolson, D., 12”, 13%, 47%. 


Daniel, book of, 182-3. 
Derenbourg, J., 46%. 


Dogma, the analogue of Hala- 
chah, 105-6, 232. 


Eerdmans, 14%. 

Eliezer b. Horkenos, 108%, 109. 
Essenes, the, 51. 

Evil, the problem of, 163-9. 
Ewald, H., 13. 
Excommunication, 1087. 

Ezra, 18, 19, 20, 21, 55-9, 102. 


Gamliel I, 72. 

Gamliel] II, 122. 

Geiger, A., 15. 

Gemara, 84. 

Gezeroth, 61. 

God, Pharisaic conception of, 
151-4. 

Gratz, H., 15, 26”, 36n. 


Haberim, 31, 33. 

Haggadah, 71, 78-82. 

Halachah, 71, 72”, 73-8, 80, 83, 
84, 85, 86, 87, 105, 106, 107, 
107-14, Ir6—23, 131, 138, 
144, 145, 162, 185, 186, 193, 
194, 195, 196, 205, 206, 207, 
208, 226, 232, 237, 238. 

Halevy, I, 36. 

Hasidim, 27, 28, 33, 35, 51, 193. 

Hellenism, 23, 25, 28, 36, 49. 

Herod, 45, 49-51. 

Hilgenfeld, A., 13. 

Hillel, 72, 84, 109. 

Hypocrisy, 116~19. 


242 


INDEX 


Ishmael b. José, 267. 
Ishmael b. Elisha, 78 7. 


Jannai (Alexander Jannzus), 
40n, 46, 47, 117. 

Jehoshua b. Hananjah, 122. 

Jehoshua b. Levi, 85. 

Jehudah b. Tabbai, 72. 

Jehudah ha-Nasi (see Rabbi). 

Jesus, 67, 99, 100, 115, 151, 167, 
189, 198”, 201-12, 215%. 

Jewish Christians, 215. 

Johanan b. Zaccai, 14”, 30”, 
42n, 164. 

John Hyrkanus, 28-33, 36, 37, 
44, 45. 

John the Baptist, 181, 2o1. 

Jonathan (Maccabeus), 28. 

Judas (Maccabzeus), 28. 


Kavvanah, 162. 
Klausner, J., 47”, 115”, 198n. 
Kohler, K., 407. 
_Kuenen, A., 21. 


Lauterbach, J. Z., 15, 16, 24, 32%, 
41, 70M, 107N, 122N. 

Laymen, position of, 24, 27, 
98-9. 

Lex talionis, 111, I112n. 

Lightfoot, J., 12. 

Liturgy, Jewish, 161-3. 


Maccabean Revolt, the, 27, 28, 
31%, 44, 49, 179, 183. 

Meir, R., 84, 1097. 

Memra, 153. 

Merit, 123, 128-30. 

Messiah, the, 169, 174, 189. 

Midrash, 20, 70, 78. 

Mishnah, 70, 84, 148, 192. 

Morality, 138-46. 


Paul, the Apostle, 54, 75, 78, 


99, 122, 165, 198, 212, 215- 


22, 226, 229. 
Perles, F., 13”, 162%. 


243 


Pharisaism, Pharisees, 30, 32-5, 
36, 49, 50, 51, 52, 63-9, IoT, 
105, 186, 188, 190-3, 197, 
199, 201-12, 214, 225, 226, 
229, 231, 232, 238, 239. 

Pompey, 48. 

Prayer, 161-2. 

Priests, 24, 29, 99. 

Prophets (prophecy), 102, 135-8, 
172, 201. 


Rabbi (Jehudah ha-Nasi, Judah 
the Prince), 26”, 84, 86, 206. 

Religion, inseparable from mor- 
ality, 138-46. 

Repentance, 166-7. 

Resurrection of the dead, 170-5, 
189. 

Revelation, 160-1. 

Reward, 123-24, 127-30. 


Saadiah, 196, 

Sacrifices, 166”. 

Sadducees, 35, 36, 38, 44, 47, 
53, 64, 66, 68. 

Salampsio (see Alexandra). 

Samuel (Amora) 75. 

Sanhedrin, 23, 25, 28, 95. 

Schoettgen, 12. 

Schiirer, E., 12, 28, 36”, 41, 46. 

Shechinah, 153-4. 

Simeon b. Gamliel I, 188. 


Simeon b. Shetah, 39, 40%, 44, 


46, 47, 72M. 
Simeon Maccabezus, 28. 
Simeon the Just, 23. 
Sin, 163-8. 
Sin, the Unpardonable, 167. 
Sira, Ben, 40”, 64, 179. 
Synagogue, 88 ff, 162, 189%. 
Synagogue, the Great, 21, 22, 23, 
95- 


Talmud, 84. 

Temple, 88. 

Torah (passim). 

Torah, Sadducean view of, 61-2. 


244 THE PHARISEES 


Tradition, 63-8, 82-7. Wellhausen, J., 137. 
Tradition of the elders, 837, 
ao Yetzer, the twofold, 155-6, 168. 
Uniformity of belief, 81. 
Universalism, 157-9. Zadokite, Fragment, 24, 26n. 
Zealots, 50, 51-2, 187-93. 
Weber, F., 13, 14, 148. Zugoth, 25, 31%. 


Weiss, I. H., 367. Zunz, 1777. 


II. RABBINICAL PASSAGES CITED. 


MISHNAH, 


Peah ii. 6 


‘coke 
Joma vii. 1’ . 


R. ha. Sh. iii. 7. 


Hagg. ii. 2 
Sotah ix . 
Nedar. ix. I 

B. Kam. viii. 1 
Sanh. x. I 
Aboth i. I 


TOSEPHTA. 


jJomai. 8 
Suce. 1V. 12 
Sotah xiii, 10 
Sanh. xili. 2°. 


TALMUD BaABLI. 


Ber.. 7% 
10° 
7 
BOE. 

Shabb. 13? 


PAGE 


Shabb. 14%, 15° . 26n 
Been 143” 
Erub. 13° . 108, 109 
Pes. 50° 113 
664 72 
Joma 10? 177% 
69% 40” 
R. h. Sh. 25% 122 
Succ. 20% 58n 
48° 47 
Hagg. ii. 177” 
14 179 
Kidd. 49° 70Nn 
664 38 
Sotah 22° 177 
Nazir 23> <<< . 120 
B. Kam. 82% 58n, 92 
1137 eg 
Metz. 58° . 120, 145%” 
S0r ny. 108 7, 109 
Bath.12%.. 102, 137 
60° . 74 
Sanh, c, x. 177” 
eet 190” 
Shebu. 6° . 177” 
A, Zar. 19% . 130 
367 74,110 
Temur. 15? STO 
Nidd. 457. 85 
TALMUD JERUSHALMI. 
Ber. 13% - 153 
Peah ii. 5 85, 85 ” 
Ma. Sh. v.9 . - 30n 
Shek, 484 . 84n 


245 


246 THE PHARISEES 


PAGE PAGE 

Meg, 734. . 0) es a 7) Bers RR. i) 
dh wear ee nia aaah eee 8 Ixv. 22.) See 
Sotahix.11.. . . . . 30” |} Debar. R: ii) 10.0 
Pesik. R. K. 40°. . . 299m 





Tanhuma, Beshall. 87° 22, 22” 
Abothd. R. Nathan (A)5 . 23 | Yalk. Shim. §783 . . . 81 


lil. OLD 


Exod. xviii. 20 
xix. 8 
XX1. 24-5 
Lev. xix. 2 
Deut. xvil. Q—-II . 
Ezra vii. Io 
Neh. viii. 7 
%. 20 . 
2 Chron. xxiv. 27 
Ps. xix. 
Ixii. II 
Cxii. I 
cxix. 
cxlv. 9 
Isa. i. 16 . 


TESTAMENT PASSAGES CITED. 


PAGE 
- 54 
148n 
“ae ye 

.126, 140 

61 

20 

21 

59 

20 
eae 
129n 
230 
al .08 
. 158 
AI ARE 


247 


Isa. Xxxi. . 
xlv. 7 
lili. 
Jer. xxili. 29 
Ezek. xviil. 4. 
Hosea iv. 6 
viii. I 
ie ee 
Amos il. 4 
Mic. vi. 8. 
Habb. ii. 3 





Ecclus. xlix. 12-13 . 
l, 11-21 . 


1 Macc. vii. 10, 16 


IV. NEW TESTAMENT PASSAGES CITED. 


PAGE PAGE 
Matt. v.38 . .... « 12" | Acts i130 ee 
4) SLC Eee eno lii, IE 2 290) c ee 
Vi 4 12 ee eee eo Xi. 20 i) 
insia6 Go toe naar oe xiii, 15 2, 
RAZ ae ieee a Xiv, 19° |. 4 (ae 
MIE S20 0 ne eee XV. 22°. 6 ee 
RV E24 iil he See ee XVi. 31. 7 
MIM RTS: alee pee eo XV. 5). Os 
XXL; 05-224 1s ee eo XViil. 12: °c 
jo. . . . . 128 | Rom. i. 18-320) eee 
Xxilh 1-36: 6G eee ili, I. 4 205 ae 
XXV2T ac i wae ee 2 (ee oes 
XEVIL) 18: 9.) oe Ge) ee 19, 20. + ssc eee 
Mark 112). wa dat ees V. 6 (5, i is 
14) ei eee eee 12-21 4 See 
QB 5) Sy ag 8 eae 20. 6 4 
A eG. 2 ee ee Wil 15). ae 
VIL Rr ie ee Oa ee Og ix. 8°.) 42 
XU G40 Se we eee x... FL -« - 4 
RF AS NY Ue emacs Sa a xi, Uff. . 3505 eee 
LUKOAV 256) koe eae 25. 6 oe 
22. .-. « » 203 | 2 Cot, Xi 25-6 ee 
30. «. «4,203 | Gal. 1. 20.05 
MADRAS ua eee lil, 24, 4.2.2 rr 
IK TO es eee ae Vi Tw rs 
48 . ws es 204.) Col. dil, 1 

JOR, Vill)4404.: soi eee Es 


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